


Save the Undies

by ruff_ethereal



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demon Hunters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Crack, Demon!Fred, Explicit Language, F/F, Gen, Hunter!GoGo, Illegal Activities, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mild Language, Panties, Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Temporary Character Death, The Most Mature of Mature Fics, Underwear Theft, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-02 15:11:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 30,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4064581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruff_ethereal/pseuds/ruff_ethereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a Hunter would be so much easier if GoGo's main weapon wasn't used panties.</p><p>It'd also be a lot easier if she'd never chosen that fateful day to borrow Honey Lemon's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sauce-Shield Slaying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MareisuinShihaku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MareisuinShihaku/gifts).



> Non-specific religious commentary, tons of curse words, and stupidity abounds, all mostly in the style of “Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.”
> 
> You have been warned.

“I need your panties to save the world.”

The blonde blinked, then smiled. “Well, I have to give you credit for originality...”

“No. Seriously. I need to borrow your panties, so I can use them to kill a demon.”

The blonde's smile turned worried. She slowly stepped away, using the arm that wasn't loaded with a bag of groceries to grab her phone.

In a bit of a mixed blessing, the demon I was hunting chose that moment to show up for the both of us. Most of its human disguise was still intact, but the claws, the jaws, and the burning eyes made it pretty obvious it wasn't one.

The blonde dropped her groceries.

The demon lunged at her.

I intercepted it, tackling it down to the ground, before I started punching the ever loving shit out of it.

“PANTIES!” I screamed as the demon started clawing and biting at me.

I'd never made a girl take her panties off so fast. I wished this was in the context of me getting laid, but unfortunately, it was in the context of me trying to kill a demon before it killed me or any of the innocent people in the city.

The blonde balled up her underwear and threw it at me.

I reached out to grab it.

The demon saw it, and lunged at my arm to try and intercept them.

My hand grabbed the underwear first.

The demon's jaws ended up firmly snapped shut on my wrist.

I gritted my teeth and willed the underwear into my weapon of choice. The mint green and egg white panties started glowing, turning into an object of pure light, before it reformed into the shape of a weapon and solidified into something I could actually use.

Now all I needed to do was punch the ever loving shit out of the demon again, hoping it would let go of my wrist, so I could _actually use_ the shield the panties turned into.

Times like these I wonder why I couldn't have gotten a weapon that was easy to use, especially if you were in a bind. I would have appreciated a pistol, because then I could take potshots at this motherfucker and cause some damage—wouldn't even have to be within biting or clawing range for any of my prey.

Maybe even a dagger, because then, I could turn it using my hands, and still be able to cause some damage—maybe not enough to kill the demon, but certainly enough pain to make it let go of my arm.

Ideally, I'd have wanted a minigun with an attachment that was essentially the bastard child of a bayonet, a battle axe, and a chainsaw, but then, I didn't have much say in pretty much _anything_ that happened in my life these days.

I punched, I punched, and I punched. Then I punched a little bit more, to see if that would make any difference.

No such luck. The demon was still clamped down tight on my arm. It couldn't bite through it—I was made of tougher stuff than that—but then I couldn't get it to let go, meaning we were probably going to be locked in this stalemate for all eternity.

So I tried the only avenue of attack left: the shield.

The one thing I hated most about having to borrow or steal other people's panties is that the kind of weapon they'd turn into was wholly dependent on the kind of person they were. It would have been so easy if every pair of panties in the world turned into the razor sharp disc I knew so well, but no, every pair except mine would always turn into something else entirely.

The blonde's shield was shaped like a flower—you know the kiddie cartoon drawings, with the petals that are basically C's? I pulled myself up using the demon's head as leverage, and leaned down to see what the face of it looked like.

It had a dial. One with several symbols around it, and its point currently set to what looked like a 0 with a slash through it. I couldn't see what the other ones were in the poor light and the awkward angle.

Out of having no other choice, I reached up to the dial, and turned it a notch to the side.

The shield suddenly exploded. The demon yelped and let go of my hand, whimpering and skittering off like a dude who'd just learned you don't put Icy Hot on your dick unless you're a super masochist. I pulled myself into a ready position, happy to see something was going my way.

The petals on the shield were steadily billowing out a thick golden mist. I smiled, hoping it was some sort of demon killing gas, until I took a breath and realized everything suddenly smelled like Indian food.

I held the shield up to my nose and sniffed.

Curry.

The motherfucking shield was billowing out goddamn curry powder.

I don't know what They thought, making this weapon turn out like this, but if I could, I would punch Them in the dicks or dick-equivalents, then see how They liked curry powder shaken all over Their bare crotches.

Still, a shield was a shield, and I still needed to kill that demon, so I turned my attention back to it and gave it a death glare.

The demon had recovered from the spice blast; though it was still tearing up and its nostrils were red and throbbing, the pain had subsided enough for it to focus on killing me again.

We lunged at each other, the demon claws first, me with the shield first.

To my misfortune, it got smart and avoided using its jaws to bite me; instead, it started clawing at the shield, trying to tear it off of my hand and tear into me without getting its nose even close to the curry cloud.

To _its_ misfortune, the shield reacted to all the sharp claws scratching it and started jetting out more of the curry from its petals. As its wielder, I was magically protected from the worst of it, but even my sinuses were starting to burn from the impenetrable cloud of spice we found ourselves in.

I managed to stumble out of it, coming back into fresh air like I had just swam my way out of solid ground. The demon was still inside, clutching its throat, choking and crying as it wasn't just inhaling curry powder, the curry was actively forcing its way down into its nostrils, throat, and lungs by sheer force of volume.

“Try the other ones!” The blonde cried, and my attention was suddenly turned back to the shield.

I didn't bother to read the symbols—the demon was already somehow crawling it's way out of the cloud, even as it choked and wept spicy, golden tears. I would have felt sorry for the poor bastard if it hadn't been the one to force me into this situation in the first place.

I clicked the dial to the next notch and hoped it wouldn't be something stupid. To none of my surprise, it was:

Mayonnaise.

Really, really, _really_ fucking cold mayo, might I add. This one didn't drip off the petals so much as it just oozed into a really thick layer around them, so chilly that the air was starting to turn into frost.

I'd gotten some distance between me and the demon—actually about a foot or two, but since it was barely inching its way back towards me, I had a while—and decided to test something out: I threw the shield.

There was no physical, mortal mechanics for it--if I wanted to throw my shield, that motherfucker flew off, hit something or reached its maximum distance (which it decided, based on a series of conditions I would really love to know one of these goddamn days), before flying back to me.

In this case, the shield hit the demon square in the face. Instead of just rocketing back to me, however, the shield exploded like it did earlier, mayonnaise jetting out of the petals and gunking most of the demon's body.

Fortunately for me, suddenly being trapped in a thick layer of _way_ below zero mayonnaise hadn't done anything to solve the curry it was still breathing, so the bastard just whimpered pathetically as it lay completely, perfectly still.

Frozen solid or aware it was fucked and it could do nothing to change that, I didn't know, but I didn't really care.

I twisted the dial.

Butter.

Like the mayonnaise, it formed a layer over the petals, but this time it was constantly churning and dripping, but never really spilling down to the ground. I threw the shield at the demon again, and even frozen and stuck in a cocoon of extremely cold mayonnaise, it slipped and splayed out all over the floor.

Now it didn't make it a sound at all, possibly to avoid shooting its dignity even further past zero.

I clicked the dial another time.

Cheese sauce.

It was hot, gooey, and smelled like the _good_ cheese, the ones the serious, high-class pizzerias used. This nonsense was starting to make me hungry, so I clicked the dial to the last symbol before it looped back to the naught.

Salsa.

Surprisingly room temperature as I put my hands on it. This one did, however, smoulder and glow bright red, so I figured it'd be serious shit for whatever wasn't me. I walked to the demon and, to give them some semblance of an honourable death, I picked up them up by their neck—or I think it was their neck, it was hard to find underneath all that mayo—and smacked them upside the head with the shield.

The salsa spewed out of the petals and covered their head. I swear the sizzling noise it made as it melted it down was actually the demon's sigh of relief that this violent nonsense was finally over, and it could go back to the Land _Way_ Down Under, where there weren't Hunters like me borrowing panties that turned into ridiculous sauce-shields.

The demon burned up into nothing, the sauces turned into vapours and surged back into the shield. Now that the fight was over, the weapon automatically turned back into a pair of panties, one that ended up neatly draped over my hand.

I walked back to the blonde, still standing where she was earlier, dumbstruck and confused by what the hell just happened.

“Thanks.” I said before I handed her her underwear back.

Then I ran away, because what the fuck else do you do after you borrow a girl's panties then use them to kill a demon?


	2. Of Used Panties and Peaceful Cohabitation

“The fuck did you do to my underwear?!”

My roommate Wasabi put down his knife, pulled off his apron, and washed his hands. He moved calmly and deliberately, which told me that he'd planned for this to happen, he was just wiling away the time before I came storming back to our apartment to give him hell about my missing underwear.

I suspected he'd been planning this shit for months, but all that mattered right now was that he'd actually gone went and done it.

He walked up to me and stood a polite distance away, so no one could say that he was using his considerable size advantage over me. (Which was, by the way, his _only_ advantage over me.)

“I put them where they belong: in the hamper.” He said, casual as can be.

Under normal circumstances, yes, used panties would belong in the hamper or wherever you put your dirty clothes before they got thrown into the washing machine. These weren't normal circumstances, however, and I wasn't a pervert getting a kick out of carrying my used underwear in my jacket pocket as I went about my day.

I was a Hunter and I was using those used panties to to turn them into shields and kill demons.

(That sentence made about as much sense to you as it did to me, don't worry.)

Back to the confrontation:

“The fuck did you do that for?!” I yelled.

“Do you realize how unsanitary that is, GoGo?!” Wasabi yelled back, throwing his arms out at me in his “freakout” pose. “Do you _realize_ how incredibly uncomfortable it makes me, knowing you're saving your used underwear and stuffing them into your jacket pocket and doing god-knows-what with them?!

“And don't even tell me what your reasons are, because trust me, I don't want to know why you do it more so than knowing that you're actually doing it!”

I groaned. “I don't fuck around with your stuff, why the hell have you started doing it to mine?!”

“Because it needs to **stop,** GoGo! We both know we can't afford any other apartments! We're roomies by mutually desperate and lacking means, and if you don't want me to get more desperate than stealing your used underwear, I suggest you stop hoarding them in the first place!”

“I don't hoard them, you assbutt! I keep them in my pocket for a day then I throw them in the wash! It's different!”

I stormed off to my room and blocked out the rest of his words, whatever they were. Just to spite him, I marched across the hall and turned the sign on his room door three degrees off-center—something that would catch his attention and throw his entire world into chaos.

The one good thing about living with an OCD organic cultist neat-freak was that it was _really_ easy to get back at them.

* * *

All Hunters' weapons involve underwear. It can be anyone's underwear, really, but for the sake of convenience and lessening our chances of being convicted for theft or becoming registered sex offenders, we use our own.

The catch? They have to be _used_ underwear.

Don't ask me why. As a matter of fact, don't ask me anything about how this whole shebang works, or why things are the way they are.

That's all Their doing, or so everyone would have you believe, and what They do is inherently incomprehensible to everyone but Them, so there's no point in even thinking of how Their little game works.

(Philosophers are not ultimately moot, by the way; those guys ponder the right questions, because they think about things that humans can wrap their brains around.)

I hated it. A lot of Hunters, with only a handful of exceptions, also hated it or begrudgingly got used to that fact, and we all went about our business as best as we could.

Sometimes this meant having to constantly wear skirts or dresses so you could have easy access to your underwear. Sometimes this meant constantly dressing provocatively and scantily if only because that made it easier to get your gear out when the shit goes down. Sometimes this meant having to stuff into your jacket pocket the underwear you've used that day in the intended fashion, so tomorrow you'd have your weapon handy and ready to go if you happen to run into a demon.

This had its problems. Underwear was only so tough, after all, and you would have to constantly be on the lookout for wear and tear on the item itself, let alone maintaining its weapon form. Plus, a worn-out garter is more devastating to us Hunters than it ever is to people who can go about with stockings that drop down to their ankles

There was also the problem when underwear wasn't “used” enough to make a viable weapon, when you couldn't take it off, or you forgot to wear it before you went out of your house.

Or, in my case, your OCD organic cultist neat-freak roomie decides to take matters into his own hands.

I wish I could explain this shit to him. I wish I could tell him that his little act of rebellion almost jeopardized the safety of the entire human dimension. I wish I could tell him I was a Hunter with more than enough physical strength and supernatural enhancements to break every bone in his body with three gestures from my pinkie finger.

But unfortunately for me, one of the many “perks” of being a Hunter is that all mortals automatically forget all about or misremember anything that might be incriminating, with supernatural forces taking advantage of the malleable nature of human memory. In recent years, we have an entirely separate division of people dedicated to hacking and working their Photoshop magic on evidence.

So as long as Wasabi lived, I would forever be the assbutt roommate with the disgusting habit of carting around their own used underwear in their pocket all day, yells at them a lot, and gets angry over the weirdest things, but you couldn't throw them out because they were always constant on their half of the rent, and didn't infringe on “his” space aside from said used underwear habit and the occasional bit of payback.

It wasn't fair. I didn't sign up for this shit. But then again, between that and my other choices, this was the best deal I could ever have.

I wish all of those warnings about the afterlife had been more specific and accurate. The Land _Way_ Down Under is not an eternal pit of suffering and punishment for all of your transgressions.

Oh no: it's **much** worse.

You _work_ to pay for all of the shit you've done. If you think you can just lay back and have your penance delivered to you, you've got another thing coming, buddy.

* * *

I didn't stay in my apartment long. I was already fucking up my mortal job, the one that I had to maintain so I had a perfectly reasonable way to explain how I managed to feed and clothe myself and pony up when it was time to pay the rent.

I went into my room, dug out a pair of used panties from the emergency cache—as a Hunter, you have to do this kind of crap—and stuck it into my jacket pocket. I didn't go back out the door and risk Wasabi knowing that I actually had it, and several dozen pairs that have never been washed, so instead, I went out the window and to our fire escape.

It felt good to move, climb, get around without worrying about making it in time to stop the latest demon from causing chaos in the city or being late to a delivery. It reminded me of a time way before, where I'd go out on my bike and on runs for the hell of it, to get my blood pumping, feel my lungs burning, that rush that made you feel so alive and just want to go faster, farther, and longer.

I quickly made my way down the ladders—too quick, for my liking—and found myself back in the alley on the side of my apartment building. I walked out and to the front of my building.

My bike was still chained to the rack with all three locks intact, which was good. I had three mortal padlocks and the one supernatural combo lock that would cause would-be thieves all manner of unpleasantness, because sometimes, supernatural speed on your feet just doesn't cut it.

The blonde I'd borrowed the panties from just happened to be passing me by, which was neutral. I remembered her, but she didn't remember me.

The blonde's eyes widened, she looked dead at me, then she cried: “It's you!”

That? That was really super fucking terrible.


	3. Spot the Problem

I was in a dim, deserted alley, clamping a hot girl's mouth shut with my hand, while I held the rest of her down with my other. As you might expect by now, this wasn't in the context of kinky semi-public alley sex, more me trying to keep her quiet until I could figure out an avenue of escape.

She was biting down on my hand as hard as she could, but I barely felt it—Hunters were resistant to pain.

“Resistant.” Not “Immune.”

She kneed me in the crotch. While most people would get scared shitless of a person that didn't even flinch after getting a brutal strike to such a delicate area, she tried again. And again. And again. And again.

With two more just for spite, of course.

Like a feather landing on a dam that was just barely holding it together, my pain tolerance gave out and a flood of massive, _excruciating_ pain surged up from my loins and into my brain to let me know just how much taking several knees to the crotch **hurt,** Hunter or no.

I gasped and crumpled to the  ground, my one bite-mark laden hand and its unmolested pair covering my crotch in a futile attempt to protect myself from further genital abuse. In another mixed blessing, the blonde wanted answers more than she wanted to hurt me—although, that could also be because struggling against a Hunter then kneeing them in the crotch enough times for them to shrivel up took a lot out of a mortal.

“My name's Honey Lemon. You are?”

“GoGo.” I choked. I healed fast, but I didn't heal _that_ fast.

I curled up on my side and into a protective ball—I didn't want to know just how much damage those platform heels could do. Honey Lemon snapped a photo of me, mostly centered around my face, then punched my name and the image in a search engine.

“No accounts on social media, all Google searches don't lead anywhere actually _useful...”_ She looked up from her phone and at me, a curious frown on her face. “Who _are_ you?”

“Not here...” I gasped as I picked myself up off the ground. “On the roof.”

I limped back into my building and up the stairs, Honey Lemon following close behind.

* * *

It is logistically impossible for Hunters to work by themselves without a constant stream of miracles and inexplicable, highly convenient coincidences throughout the day, which is why we have Links, mortals who are unaffected by the paranormal censoring and are privy to our existence and activities, with the promise that they can help things run smoother for us.

Their tasks varied, but mostly, they provided administrative work like accounting, taking care of errands and necessities like real estate agents or people who always dropped by and gave their “friends” their mail, or even just the kind of people with connections and favours that we could use.

The rewards were generous, prompt, and consistently on time, one of the perks of your boss being omnipotent beings beyond mortal comprehension--”Them” for short. Still, the roster cycled frequently, because there really were some things you can't pay someone to do.

And then there are Spots.

Like their name might tell you, we didn't want them, but we couldn't rub them out, either. To our eternal chagrin, “mortal murder” was not part of the Hunter's toolbox.

Spots are like Links, immune to the mind wiping, aware of our existence, but without all the helpful skills, resources, and connections. Most Spots were content to pretend we did not exist, reason away the supernatural events they see, or seek external aid for coping, usually in the form of a bottle of booze.

The remaining Spots were like the protagonist of an amateur sleuth novel—once they got a whiff, they wanted to stick their noses in all the way to the very bottom.

* * *

“But why only regular people? Wouldn't it be better to make Links out of high-ranking politicians, Fortune 500 businesspeople, and top officials?”

I sighed. “I don't know. I don't know anything, alright? If there's anything you want to know about how They work, I'm not the one you should be asking.”

Honey Lemon frowned. “Isn't there like a manual, an encyclopedia, or a supernatural Wikipedia somewhere?”

“Nada.”

Honey Lemon huffed. “Isn't there an expert you can ask about these sorts of things?”

“You know how scientists say, 'For every question we answer, two more take its place.'? That's _exactly_ how it is with this, times infinity. And I do mean there is an actual value to multiplying by infinity, not an ever expanding set of numbers, but it's physically impossible for any of us to wrap our heads around it so we don't even try, we just accept things as they are and try to understand the things we actually _can.”_

Honey Lemon's annoyance turned to disappointment.

I crossed my arms. “Yeah, sorry, Alice, but you can only explore so much of this Wonderland.”

Honey Lemon rested her arms on the edge of the roof 's edge and stared out at the view of my street. I turned around and faced the crappy neighbourhood with her. Around us, the old “roof hang out” couch, the laundry lines, and the myriad of used cigarette butts, joints, and random litter stayed where they were, unaffected by  Honey's crisis.

“You get used to it.” I said softly. “Not knowing shit about what's going on, and being forced to do it anyway.”

Honey Lemon nodded. “I figured as much.” She turned to me. “So, how do I become a Link, exactly?”

I turned to her and gave her my blankest, “I'm completely serious face.”

“You don't.”

Honey Lemon looked at me quizzically. “So you mean They choose who get to be Links and who stay Spots?”

I'd been hearing the term long enough to know when someone was capitalizing the “T.” She was serious about this shit, that was the first and arguably the most important sign. But, I was equally serious about testing her, and more poignantly, getting her the hell out of my life.

“They do. But there are also Hunters that turn regular people or Spots into Links out of necessity—sometimes there just aren't enough Links that are willing to do the job, and sometimes, They like to throw us a bone and give us someone to suffer with together.”

Honey Lemon beamed.  “ Then you can make me a Link!”

“Yes. I can. But I won't.”

Honey Lemon scowled. “Well why not?!”

“Well _first of all_ , there's the fact that being a Link tends to be a crappy, dangerous job, and _second of all,_ my job as a Hunter is to _protect_ people, _not_ send them off into danger. I have this _really_ strong hunch that sponsoring you as my Link is going _pretty_ against what I should be doing. No clue why.”

“And what if I _want_ to work a crappy, dangerous job, and help you fight demons?”

I rolled my eyes. “And why the hell would you want that?”

Honey Lemon snorted. “Oh, I don't know, because it's _exciting_ , _so_ much more interesting than my life before a random stranger asked me for my panties, and because said stranger is also pretty hot!”

I opened my mouth. Then, the last thing she said to me registered in my brain and struck with the force of another knee to the crotch, without the “crumpling to the floor” part.

I blushed and stared at her. “Did you just call me hot?”

Honey Lemon smirked at me. “What can I say, I'm hopelessly addicted to bitches who like to live life dangerously.” She leaned in closer and smiled. “And what's more dangerous than fighting demons from hell with only used underwear for weapons?”

I blushed harder.

Then I jumped off the roof, landed on the fire escape I knew was down below, and escaped back into my room, because what the fuck else are you supposed to do when you realize the hot crazy chick is actually into you, and you maybe kinda are into them, too?

I crawled back into my room through the window, and went out the regular door to head to the kitchen to get myself a strong cup of coffee. I opened it just in time to see Wasabi looking right up to my door and holding a package in his hand.

“Oh, GoGo, perfect timing: someone dropped off a package you need to deliver, said it was to make up for playing hooky all morning.” He said, completely, absolutely calm, as he was used to my “from the window” entrances—he was the reason there was a “Welcome” mat on the fire escape, after all.

My nervousness was replaced with curiosity. Save for a few packages that intentionally wouldn't make it to the recipient, I had a perfect track record of making all of my deliveries on time and in good condition. The boss never added new packages out of the blue like this, unless They needed something delivered.

Wasabi handed me the box and I read the information up top. I almost dropped it.

It was for a customer that was only known as “Honey Lemon,” with an address down below that I had a sinking feeling was her house, her apartment, or her job, and a notice that I had to deliver it by 5 PM today.


	4. How To Lose A Fight Against Omnipotent Beings

It ended with me looking like a tiny, angry fluorescent pink flamingo in a ruined leather jacket, walking up to Honey Lemon's apartment without any underwear, that _fucking_ package clutched to my chest.

It started with an empty pack of gum.

I needed bubblegum, the cheap artificial strawberry flavoured crap that ran out of flavour two-three seconds after you started chewing. Not “wanted”—“ _needed”_ it, and I had a perfectly scientific explanation: substance addiction. You would think that if you made your supernatural law enforcers super tough, super strong, and super resistant to pain and physical injury, you'd also make them immune to mortal cravings and foibles, but nope.

Every Hunter I know has their own vices. There's a _shockingly_ low amount of alcoholics, sex/porn addicts, or druggies among us; no, we get our fixes from mundane things, like crappy brewed coffee that was a step up above instant (we're specifically after the lack of quality), sugary cereals with colourful packaging, or the next episode of a children's show we're inexplicably, completely obsessed with.

So you'd understand that I was _really_ fucking pissed to discover see my packs of gum empty the morning after I got the package, exactly 5 AM in the morning, 12 hours late in delivering it. Even all my emergency stashes of gum had suddenly, mysteriously disappeared or been ruined overnight.

I knew this wasn't just one of the hundreds of millions of minor annoyances that plague everyone through the day. When They wanted to send you a message, They _sent_ you a message, with all the bells, whistles, and useless apps you'd never really use past the first 5 minutes but looks cool in the advertisements and the copy.

My mistake was ignoring it. With mortals? You could do that no problem. But with Them? It was a _whole_ different story.

* * *

“What happened to the coffee maker?!”

It was a given that the cheap machine would crap out quickly. I just wished it could have taken a different day to crap out, and more so, that I'd actually did the thing that could have done just that.

Second only to bubblegum, I needed coffee in the morning. Not because I needed the caffeine boost, but because it was a leftover habit back when I was still a mortal. Like I said, Hunters and vices go together like Nutella and anything edible.

“It broke. It happens.” Wasabi said as he took that specific moment to sip his tea, the assbutt. “Maybe you should have bought a better coffee maker—or better yet, drink something that doesn't need a dedicated machine, like tea!”

I ground my teeth, gnawing at a flavourless wad of gum that wasn't there out of habit. “Fuck that, I'm heading to the store.”

I pulled open our front door, walked out, and immediately got knocked to the ground.

“OH SHIT! SORRY!” Said the rolling office chair derby racer that just happened to be passing by at that moment.

I growled and picked myself up. Though the assbutt should have careened straight down the stairs at the end of the hall, they somehow managed to miraculously brake just before the wheels went off the floor and onto air.

Yes, They could be dicks like that. But generally, you were a dick to Them first.

“Better hurry up! You don't want to have another extra package to deliver.” Wasabi said, doing his very least to hide his smirk from me.

I shot him a death glare and walked down the hall. Office Chair Racer somehow managed to run over my foot as they reset for their second round.

I resisted the urge to murder them, got on my bike, and started peddling to the corner store for a cup of cheap Joe.

As I'd later discover, Honey Lemon worked as a barista for an indie coffee shop—They always did like Their messages poetic, too.

* * *

“HOW CAN YOU BE OUT?!”

The cashier looked at me blankly, with the face of a woman that really couldn't give a shit. “Deliveries don't make it. People buy up all the gum we have. That's how.” The bitch decided to choose that moment to blow a bubble at me.

I balled up my fists, every inch of my body shaking with anger that I was just barely keeping in check. Aside from the fact that killing someone in cold blood would defeat the purpose of me being a Hunter and set me back in a number of ways, I didn't want to get banned from this convenience store—it was the only one in a three mile radius that had what I needed at prices I could agree with.

I groaned. “I'll pay you for a stick of your gum. Five bucks.”

Excessive, you might say, but I wasn't in the mood for negotiating or chancing her turning me down.

The cashier popped her bubble. “S'my last stick.” She pointed to her mouth.

I stared at her. She just casually put her gum back into her mouth, and resumed chewing.

I stomped off to the self-service station. Of course, the pot was broken and I spilled most of the blazing hot coffee on my hand, and _of course_ the store had a policy that I had to pay for two cups—the one I actually shotgunned down my throat, and the one I spilled all over their nice floors.

I ponied up, got back on my bike, and rode away. I hadn't even gone a block when I got nailed by a paint bomb and crashed.

I really should have seen that coming. With my superhuman senses and reflexes, I could have detected the balloon before it even dropped from the roof, and if I decided to go In the Zone, I had about three seconds of the mortal realm freezing and several more of most everyone being too slow to stop me from lobbing that bomb right back into the sender's face.

But no, I was too pissed about the gum, the double-charged coffee, and Them to notice.

I looked up and saw that my attackers were two frat girls—who also happened to be a physics major and a mechanical engineering major who had teamed up to make a complex machine that is specifically designed to drop paint bombs on passersby without you having to lift a finger.

Hands-free pranking, with the benefit of video footage, and hard data about trajectory, wind speed, and target/projectile velocity—truly, higher education is the path to a better future for all of us.

“Newton nails another one!” The physicist cried as her engineer buddy cheered, and the two of them shared a high five.

I picked myself up from the ground, thinking that those two bitches were lucky I hadn't mangled my bike in the crash. If I had, they would have seen a tiny, angry fluorescent pink flamingo in a ruined leather jacket scaling their fire escape before I smashed that fucking paint bomb machine to pieces.

As it stood, I now had a pretty good reason to go home, change, and collect Honey Lemon's package and actually deliver it to her. They hadn't broken me just yet, however, so I decided that my clients that day were going to get their packages from a tiny, angry fluorescent pink flamingo in a ruined leather jacket.

Then They pulled Their trump card.

I felt “a disturbance in the force,” as we Hunters called it. There was an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, an instinctive sense that things were not right, that there was something bad about to happen—or rather, there was _something_ in the immediate vicinity that was so _wrong_ it couldn't hide how much it didn't belong in this realm.

It could mean a lot of things. There were Spots and Links that liked to mess around with the occult that wasn't parlor tricks, and sometimes, those tricks ended up turning lethal to them and everyone within the block. Sometimes, a certain combination of mortal activities produced a false alarm, like it was a gas leak.

But most of the time, it meant there was a demon nearby, and they were about to stop blending in and start raising hell.

I got back on my bike and went wherever my stomach churned the most. I braked in front of an alley, watching a demon walk out of a fresh portal from the Land _Way_ Down Under.

Their disguise was an adult of androgynous appearance, completely nondescript, probably a 20-something who liked baggy clothes and didn't shower much.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out my underwear—the pair I reserved specifically for fighting.

Then the demon turned into a giant mass of tentacles. It shot out several towards me and pulled me off my bike and towards it. It immobilized my arms and legs. It tore my panties out of my hand and shredded them to pieces.

Then it started pulling down my shorts.

You think you've watched enough hentai to know where this is going, you'd be wrong. Aside from the fact that most demons are sexless (which is why they're “its”), turns out, even _they_ think tentacle rape is repulsive, and if they were into that, they wouldn't do it on a Hunter that was perfectly capable of breaking free and killing them, whatever position they forced them into.

Yes, even asexual abominations from the Land _Way_ Down Under have standards.

Fortunately, it decided to tear off my underwear instead of slipping it off. Down between my legs and off my feet, I'd have been toast, but it made the mistake of trying to taunt me by holding my ripped panties in my face.

For those of you that want to fight dirty, and fight dirty well: know that the mouth can be a dangerous weapon. If not for biting you, then for being used as a hand in a pinch.

I bit down hard on my panties as they glowed, and in seconds, I was biting down on the edge of my shield. Though it was razor sharp, it was impossible for me to cut myself on it, letting me swing my head about with wild abandon, turning parts of the demon into unholy sashimi.

It dropped me and retreated, I put my shield on my arm like a buckler and started spinning it. Where Honey Lemon's shield had the gimmick of weaponizing condiments, mine was much, much simpler: it could turn into a circular saw that reflected projectiles and cut through things _very_ nicely.

The demon tried to defend itself as I straddled that motherfucker, but once I got my shield roaring at full speed, there was little stopping it. I slammed it straight into it until it burned to ashes and disappeared. Just before that, my shield glowed with bright light again, before cracks appeared all over it and it shattered, leaving me clutching a pair of very much _ruined_ panties in my hand.

I wish I could have spent some time to catch my breath, if only for the sake of doing it, but now I was kneeling in an alley, naked from the waist down, holding my ruined panties in my hand, all while looking like I'd just gone through some unspeakable things—not a good state for passersby to see you in, I think.

And besides all that,  I  had a package to deliver.


	5. Deliver Us To Danger

In yet another sign that she was perfect for the job, Honey Lemon didn't even blink as she saw me standing in her door, looking like a tiny, angry fluorescent pink flamingo with a box in my hands.

I thrust it out towards her, my clipboard and a pen balanced on top. “Delivery. Sign here, please.” I said flatly.

Honey Lemon smirked and signed. She took the box from me and read the information slip on top. “Says here I should have gotten this thing yesterday!” She looked up at me and cast me a mock suspicious look.

“Yeah, my bad.” I said with the same lack of emotion as I took the clipboard and the pen back. I shoved it back under my arm and spun around.

“Aww, don't tell me you're leaving already!”

I didn't look back at her and just kept on walking. “I still have deliveries to do.” I said as I made my way back to the steps leading up to her floor.

Then I stepped onto a spill of something slippery I swear wasn't there earlier, and I fell down the stairs.

Breaking my leg barely hurt—again, resistant to pain—but I was still going to be limping for half-an-hour at best, a full one at first. If I was running on an adrenaline high, it would have been a minute. Unfortunately, copper tiles, pinkish walls, and Honey Lemon smiling victoriously at me from the top of the stairs didn't get my blood pumping.

“You just going to lay there, or are you going to head up to my apartment?”

I sighed, collected my clipboard, and started making my way back up the stairs with a bad leg.

If suddenly getting a sizable chunk of my wages docked or fired from my job wasn't part of Their plan, I'd miraculously find an opportunity to earn back the cash, get a new job, or just find a few extra bucks on the street, as always happened.

* * *

Honey Lemon's apartment was exactly as I'd expected it to be—cramped; even harder to move in thanks to the excess of kitschy crap, hobbies, and side-jobs laying around; and looking like the visible spectrum had decided to puke artfully all over the place.

If it was any consolation, the decorations that shined in the light by being painted reflective, covered in rhinestones or other cheap jewels, or just coated in more glitter than anything should ever be were kept far away from the sunlight pouring in through the windows or the light of the bulbs up in the ceiling.

Her couch was one of those crappy sofas that had been made a decade ago, and suffered more than its fair share of abuse, stains, and spills in that time. Fortunately, Honey Lemon had gotten the whole thing steamed and covered it with a much nicer fabric for insurance.

I laid back on one of the cushions, my leg set out straight on the coffee table—I didn't need it to heal wrong. Aside from the package laid out on it with Honey Lemon's pink cat-themed box cutter, there was a jar filled with sticks of gum wrapped in colourful plastic—homemade, I'd assume. The strong smell of good coffee wafted in from Honey Lemon's kitchen, a scent that'd lingered in the living/room kitchen long after the pot was empty.

Though I was still pissed at Them for earlier this morning and the stairs, I had to admit They were as always generous once you actually did what you were told.

Honey Lemon came back with two mugs of coffee. To none of my surprise, they were shaped like cutesy cartoon animals: hers was a pink kitten, mine was a yellow puppy. “You strike me as a 'just black' kind of girl, so I didn't put anything in yours.” She said as she handed me my mug and sat down beside me.

I ignored the “ear” handles and looked at the liquid inside. Definitely “Black,” little to no traces of brown or gold in it. It smelled great, but then again, all coffee of this class tended to have that going for them. I took a sip.

I cringed. It was one of those exotic beans whose fans are people with “refined tastes,” or as I like to call them, “people who care too goddamn much about their coffee.” This specific blend was something I'd recommend to someone who wanted the shit punched out of their tastebuds with a distinctly Bitter aftertaste.

In short, it tasted like crap, and thus, it was perfect.

“Feel free to take some gum if you'd like! Homemade!” Honey Lemon said as she set her mug down and exchanged it for the box cutter. “All artificial strawberry flavour! Haven't gotten it to keep for longer than a few minutes, but it's better than the commercial crap.”

The only thing I took from that was “free gum,” which was in itself a plus. I took one and shoved it into my pocket for later.

Honey Lemon sliced away the packaging tape and opened up the flaps. The very first thing we saw: panties. Dozens of panties, in all different colours, patterns, and designs, with a single white cotton pair laid up right on top.

Honey Lemon picked the odd underwear up and stretched it out in the air. _“Pretty_ sure this isn't in my size.” She grinned at me.

I sighed and grabbed it from her. It was in mine, and I'd wear it later.

Honey Lemon dug through the rest of the box and came up with the following items: a sleeveless hoodie whose front was covered in dozens of colourful patches, like a clothing version of Honey Lemon's apartment sans the glitter and jewelry; a bronze chain bracelet whose charm looked like—what else?--my shield; QR codes that uploaded her phone with all the necessary protocols, contacts, and information to being a Link; a brand new set of clothes for me; a leather cleaning kit with a bottle of skin-safe paint remover thrown in; and stockings.

Dozens of dozens of pairs of stockings.

“Those aren't my size...” I mumbled.

Honey Lemon's grin grew wide like her eyes. “They are in mine!” She pulled on the vest-hoodie, and slipped the charm bracelet on her dominant hand. She slipped her feet out of her platform shoes, bracing herself on the edge of the coffee table as she slipped off the stocking from one leg.

I'd like to say I watched her pull it off to see my doom happening right before my eyes, but now that I wasn't worrying about a demon or being pissed off at her, I had to admit, Honey had some _very_ nice legs.

My checking out was cut short as the stocking in Honey Lemon's hand glowed and quickly turned into a pink gauntlet—one with pads on the palm and the tips of the fingers, and a dial on the back of the hand, which to none of my surprise had the same set of symbols as the shield version of it.

Honey Lemon started clicking the dials. The palms started billowing out or dripping with the condiments it was set to, growing into a writhing mass in the palm of Honey Lemon's hand. She set it to butter and made like she was holding a baseball, and the mass suddenly tightened into a solid shape, like they were caught in a magnetic containment field—or more accurately, a _supernatural_ containment field.

Honey Lemon relaxed her hand, and the ball loosened back into that vaguely circular mass. She clicked back to curry and waved it through the air, leaving a little trail of spicy powder in the air. We were both immune to its sinus incinerating wrath, probably because of the charm.

Without any instruction from me or reading the guides, the gauntlet turned back into Honey Lemon's stocking—another sign that yesterday was more of a coincidence than they usually were. She clutched it in her hand, her whole body shaking in excitement. She turned to me looking happier and brighter than I'd ever seen her before.

“Do you know where I can take this out for a test run?!”

I was about to say "No." when something in the box caught my eye. I tried to ignore it, but Honey Lemon saw the way my eyes turned to it for a split second. Her hand darted into the mess of stockings and pulled out another card with a QR code on it.

I knew that card, the redwood and gold background, with the logo of two angel-like wings with demonic horns for feathers.

There wasn't any point in delaying or saying that my leg still hadn't healed—where we were going, we weren't going to need physical bodies on the mortal plain.


	6. Mass Murder For Fun And Profit

Honey Lemon threw her panties at my face. Again, this was to give me a shield to fight with, not a teasing prelude to hot sex.

I sighed and just turned it into its shield form, the only one I'd have until I could get back to my apartment and the stash. I raised it up, looked at the face, got to memorizing the symbols and the order they came in.

I had this sinking feeling I was going to be using it a lot more from now on.

Honey Lemon already turned her stocking back into a gauntlet. Unlike me, she was starting out with the salsa first and foremost, the sauce that'd actually kill demons. “So, where are we?” She asked as she stared out at the vast expanse of nothing before us.

“We're in the Hunting Lodge's training room. See that circle?” I pointed to the blue ring around us. “That's how much room we're given to train and fight with by default.”

“So what, we just duel each other, throw our shields and sauce balls at empty air?” Honey Lemon asked.

I shook my head. “Nah, you can change it to whatever you want. Just order--”

Like a scene from the matrix, the area around me changed, buildings, streets, details, and everything else zooming in from the distance before stopping where it was supposed to be. I still had my mouth open by the time we found ourselves standing in a perfect recreation of the street where I'd first met Honey Lemon, sans the demon, and the spilled bag of groceries.

I sucked in a breath and sighed. “Fast learner, aren't you?”

“I get the hang of new things quickly, yeah~!” Honey Lemon beamed. She stopped to focus and order the demon.

From a portal in the ground popped out a Husk, a mortal soul that didn't swing far enough in either direction to be defined as a demon or one of the many types of angels. Mostly, you'd find them in the In-Between, where the consequences of indecision were most apparent.

They were dressed in an intentionally shitty costume of the demon, one that looked to be made out of cardboard and paper-mache and had overexaggerated, cartoony details. They waved their claws “menacingly” and snapped at us. For reference, the demon head was one of those costume pieces that showed off your entire face inside the “mouth.”

Honey Lemon sniggered.

“Yeah, the Hunt Masters have a twisted sense of humour. Don't feel guilty about hurting or killing them; trust me, getting badly hurt and horribly murdered is how they're going to get out of this gig eventually.”

(Just so you know, that was one of my options alongside “Become a Hunter.”)

Honey Lemon nodded. “Good to know! Stand still, I need to practice my throwing arm!” She said as she punched her gauntlet like a baseball pitcher would their glove. She reared her arm back, made like she was holding a ball, and let loose.

A baseball sized blob of salsa rocketed out of her hand and struck the “demon.” The ball exploded and covered most of it before it started sizzling and doing its thing.

It was a _very_ good thing I was not much of a fan of Mexican, because what happened next turned me off from that for the rest of my stint as a Hunter.

Honey Lemon gaped as she watched the whole thing happen right before her eyes.

“Yeah… that happens a lot.” I said as the puddle of salsa evaporated and flew back into Honey Lemon's gauntlet. “Better get used to it.”

“Good thing I want to do it again, then!” Honey Lemon smiled as she readied another salsa ball.

I stared at her in disbelief for about a split-second, before I reminded myself: “Yes, this chick _is_ in fact crazy.”

The same husk from earlier came back from the same portal. From the look on its face, it wasn't as excited to take another salsa ball to the face as Honey Lemon was to throw it.

The husk had been splattered again when I looked up at the shield and started clicking it to the other settings. Might as well get some practice in, now that we were going to be fighting together.

* * *

You remember what I said about Links mostly running errands, sitting behind desks all day, or just pulling out their phones and the nice lunches to get favours on our behalf? Well, there was a subset of them—a very rare subset—that helped out Hunters in combat.

Maybe there just weren't enough Hunters stationed in an area, and reserves in Summerland were stretched thin. Maybe They thought it was necessary to deputize a few mortals and Spots, give them a much more active role in solving a demonic crisis. Or maybe, there was no way in hell a Spot was going to leave Hunters and the rest of the Links alone until they got to personally send some demons back to the Land _Way_ Down Under.

Generally, They, Links, and Hunters liked to avoid making Power Links. As you might realize from history, giving someone a lot of power tends to warp them into monsters, be it authority, intellectual superiority, or advanced weaponry. The armour and the gear only boost a mortal's capabilities so much, too and they didn't have the logistical advantages like being able to keep up to a month's worth of fighting and constant action with only occasional five minute breaks to eat, sleep, and drink, at best.

Ultimately, death for a Link wasn't a minor inconvenience, a day trip back to the Lodge until you could get back to your current life or get used to your new identity.

Then again, if they were afraid of dying, then wouldn't be Power Links.

* * *

Spines rained down from above, spearing the ground where I was just a split second ago. I held my legs rigid as my feet slid on the massive trail of butter Honey Lemon had made for me, the yellow liquid splashing out and making a huge mess of the concrete and machinery around me.

Up above on a platform being held up by a crane, the “demon” took their thumb out of their mouth, breathed in deep, then stuck it back in and started blowing as hard as they could. The spines dotting the back of their “hide” started flying out and raining back down on me again.

“Honey!” I yelled as I raised my shield to the volley. I was running out of butter and floorspace that wasn't covered in sharp spines that I could lethally stab myself on.

“On it!” She yelled from somewhere inside the warehouse.

Loud explosions and curry powder filled the air. Above me, container vans groaned and fell to the ground, crashing inches away from me, or on top of each other, all stacked up to a tiny window of light up above me. I winced from the extremely near miss, but there wasn't any time to worry about that—I could hear the “demon's” spines raining down on my cover, piercing and eating away at the metal until it could fly through and stab me.

I skated up to the side of the van, jumped up, and jumped off it. A second after my feet were airborne again, very red, very large, and _very_ sharp spines started poking out of it like a giant wall of painful, stabby death. Up and up I went, bouncing off the sides of the container vans, till my fingers were on the edge of the opening.

I waited until the rain stopped and the “demon” took an even deeper breath than earlier. I pulled myself up to the top, turned around and got a good look at the situation.

The “demon” was still on that platform, but now I was level to it. Honey Lemon hid well away behind a wall of solid, freezing cold mayonnaise, the tips of spines stuck to it, her gauntlet hand held out and constantly reinforcing it to the point where it was impenetrable. I looked beside me, saw that I had one long, uninterrupted stretch of wall leading straight to my prey.

There was no way I was getting down or running around on the floor without getting cornered and stabbed, if I didn't just run straight into a wall of spines.

It was time to end this.

I clicked the shield to salsa, thrust it out and made a giant wall of salsa in front of me. “Honey! The wall!” I screamed as spines started flying right into the blazing hot barricade. Though the spines melted and dribbled to goop before they could reach me, some of them made it and hit the shield—reason to worry all on its own.

Honey Lemon stepped out of cover. She clicked to butter and started painting that wall yellow. I scrambled back, spun around, and started running straight towards it.

With normal, everyday butter, you couldn't use them as a way to slide on a wall fast enough and far enough to be able to jump off, fly through the air, and smack a demon on a platform with a salsa-shield to melt them down to nothing.

Fortunately, this was _supernatural_ butter, and it didn't follow the same rules.

I got nailed by a couple of spines as I went screaming towards my target, ones that dug deep into my body and made me hurt. Good thing I was in the training room, however, so when I smacked that husk in the face and coated them head to toe in enchanted salsa, I landed on the default arena's floor of nothing.

I pushed myself back up to my feet—easy now that the spines and the pain had automatically disappeared alongside the warehouse and all evidence of the fight. I clicked the shield back to the naught, took a deep breath, and groaned in pain.

We Hunters had a lot of stamina. But it wasn't unlimited, even in the Lodge.

Honey Lemon still had her stocking in its gauntlet form, along with that huge grin on her face. “Up for another round? Because I am!”

I shook my head and turned the shield back into her pair of panties and threw them back at her. “I think we're done today, thanks.”

Honey Lemon sighed, but didn't toss her underwear back to me. “Guess you're right. Man, I can't even begin to imagine how late it must be back in the real world!”

“It's not. Absolutely no time has passed since we ported into this place.”

Honey Lemon blinked. “How is that… oh, right, supernatural training room, Them, theory of relativity and all that...”

I stretched out my limbs, all aching from the training sessions. “Yeah. Don't bother thinking about it too much,”

“I can't wrap my head around it in the first place.”

I smiled. “Good. You're getting the hang of this.”

Honey Lemon smiled back. “Enough to be able to use this baby in an actual fight…?”

I was about to say “No.” when I suddenly felt it—another disturbance in the force. A **big** one, one that made me bend over and clutch my stomach, suddenly sick all over and then some.

Honey Lemon frowned. “GoGo? Are you--”

“Back.” I gasped. “We need to get back. **Now.”**


	7. Big Trouble in Little Sokyo

Most demons that made it out of the Land Way Down Under were lesser demons, just a few steps above a Husk or your average damned soul, someone that had gotten out of their punishment by slipping through the cracks and abusing loopholes.

This demon was not that.

It was massive, the size of a two story brick house, all its weight and raw power compressed into a shape like a bulldog only far derpier. It had a massive jaw like a loader's bucket, thick trails of slobber drooling out of its mouth and melting whatever it came in touch with, every breath it took released a cloud of toxic gas in the air.

In terms of intelligence, this thing was a dumbass, just a wild beast that cared for two things: sleep and food.

And that was _exactly_ why it was so dangerous.

Unfortunately for the mortals it was happily slurping up with its many tongues or scooping into its mouth, convenient resurrections weren't normally a part of the cover-up process. The news stories tomorrow would run a feature about a wild animal escaping or a truck that careened straight into a Farmer's Market, but for now, we were dealing with a giant demon that needed to be exterminated before it ate the entire block and the ones nearby.

The crowds were already thinning out by the time we arrived, which was good. That was because most of them had been eaten, killed, or swallowed and died in the demon's stomach, which was _bad._

“Are we seriously going to fight that thing?!” Honey Lemon yelled as she let go of my waist and stepped off my bike, already pulling down her panties and one of her stockings.

“Yes!” I yelled back as I kicked out the stand. “You wanted to fight demons, didn't you?!”

“Just clarifying...” Honey Lemon mumbled she tossed me her panties. She turned her stocking back into a gauntlet, I turned her underwear back into the shield.

“Stay back!” I said as I charged in with the dial set on salsa.

My leg had healed sometime between getting down from Honey Lemon's apartment to the Farmer's Market. But I was going to need more than all functioning limbs to beat this thing.

A spear came flying out and stabbing the demon in its front. The weapon stuck to its hide, the tip sunken in all the way. The beast barely flinched, but it did turn around to investigate what had happened.

Another Hunter came roaring out from the side, holding a second spear above her head. With a battle cry she thrust her weapon into the demon, flung herself up by its pole, ripping out the first one as she went somersaulting through the air and to its rear. She spun around, ready to stab it again while it was stood there, confused.

It would have been a good move if the demon hadn't taken that moment to sit down and contemplate what just happened.

The Hunter disappeared under all that unholy being. It got a thoughtful look on its face, or as thoughtful as those things could get.

“Is she okay?!” Honey Lemon yelled.

“She will be if we hurry!” I said as I got within mid-range of that thing.

The demon hummed and grumbled with discomfort. It started grinding its butt into the pavement, until it had settled into a nice, deep crater in the shape of its ass.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“… She didn't survive that, did she?”

“… Nope.”

The spear on its front turned back into a stocking and floated down to the ground. Now that the stabbing pain was gone, the demon thought it'd be a good time to start eating again. It turned to me and got a look on its face that said it was hungry for some Hunter.

“Eat this!” I cried as I threw my shield at its face. The disc came rocketing off my hand and smack dab between its eyes, exploding and covering the damned thing's head in blazing hot salsa.

It was when it started happily licking off the sauce and running at me at the same time that I started running.

Honey Lemon threw mayo grenades at it. The balls exploded into freezing cold goop several inches thick, coating over half the demon. And while that slowed it down some, it didn't _stop_ it.

I held my hand out as the shield came rocketing back to my forearm like a boomerang, but it'd come back no matter how far away I got. I risked a look over my shoulder, and jumped to the side.

The demon came thundering past like a semi-truck on legs, its mouth bulldozing and scooping up several stalls, abandoned groceries, and furniture left around. It kept on going until it hit wall, then it sped up until it went past that and through a concrete building.

I landed on the pavement and pushed myself up. Then I got a face full of butter. I wiped it off and saw that Honey Lemon was making a trail of the stuff—one that lead far, far away from the demon, the one that I could hear was coming back for a second try.

I didn't think. I put the shield on my back where it magically hovered, threw my arms out, and started sliding.

If you've never slid around on extremely thick, liquid butter before, I wouldn't recommend it. The smell isn't so good when it's not on hot toast or pancakes, and at a certain point of “covering every inch of you,” it just feels gooey and awful. I didn't even want to think about what it was going to do to me once it seeped in past my clothes and into parts I'd rather weren't slathered in dairy products.

The trail ended, just in time for me to pick myself back up on my feet and jump out of the way as the demon came roaring after me, sliding on the same butter trail I did. It didn't have the friendly advantage, so the thing went spinning around spraying butter everywhere, trying and failing to step on the ground to get some traction.

The demon sailed off far faster and longer than I did, and crashed through another building. I clicked to curry powder, threw the shield as hard as I could at the hole. It exploded in a giant cloud of curry so thick you couldn't see through it before it went screaming back to me.

I hoped that it'd at least slow the demon down or make it think twice about coming back through that path as I regrouped with Honey.

“How are we supposed to kill that thing?” Honey Lemon asked as I came up. “It just took a full blast of salsa to the face and _licked_ it off! Isn't it supposed to melt down or something?”

“The bastard's hide's too thick. It's gotta have a weakness, though; all demons have at least one, it's the rule.”

Again, don't ask me why.

“What do you think it might be?”

“Probably its stomach, it's huge and low to the ground. There's gotta be a way we can kill it from there, cut it open and then--” I groaned.

“What's wrong?”

“I don't have _my_ shield!” I raised the sauce shield. “I can't cut shit with this thing, and something tells me I can't just start whacking it in the stomach and hope the sauce works!”

I was beginning to worry that this'd be a demon best kept distracted before another Hunter came by, someone that could actually kill it.

Honey Lemon perked up. “Your stockings! Give me your stockings!”

I wasn't in the mood to snark, complain, or ask. I pulled off my shoe, stripped off one of my stockings as fast as I could, and handed it to Honey Lemon. I didn't even stop to the shoe back on as Honey Lemon held it over her other hand and it started glowing.

The new gauntlet was yellow-and-purple. The fingertips were razor sharp, and discs rested in the space between her fingers. She made a fist, and those mini saws flew into her palm, spinning like a tiny cyclone. No guessing what kind of damage it could do.

The demon came stomping back after its butter powered detour. It ran straight into the cloud of curry, and stopped in its tracks. Huge jets of the stuff started flying out as it sneezed; it wore away the wall but at least now we knew it worked better than the mayo.

“I can't turn that thing over so you can throw those at its stomach, if that's what you're thinking.” I said.

Honey Lemon grinned. “That's fine; I just need you to keep it in one place.” She started telling me the rest of her plan.

I had a bad feeling about it. But right now the worse feeling was this demon getting loose and/or the both of us ending in its stomach or smears on its ass.

I clicked to curry, made like a matador and stood right in the demon's path, no butter for it to slip on, just pavement between us.

Honey Lemon turned one gauntlet to salsa, and started moving the fingers on the other. The discs flew up to the tips of her fingers, spinning faster and faster. She stood perpendicular to me, a straight dive to the demon's side and under it once it came up to me.

The curry cloud dissipated enough for the demon to get out sniffling and sneezing. It look at us, and the expression on its face changed from "just hungry" to "pissed _and_ hungry," a bad combination.

It roared and came after me!

I smacked it in the face as it was about to scoop me up in its mouth. Curry exploded and completely blinded us; I just kept hitting it over and over, keeping the cloud thick and almost solid.

Its noxious breath filled the air as it sneezed and choked, the stuff rancid and lethal in equal proportion. Splatters of its acid drool rained down on me, some on the shield, some on my clothes, some directly on me.

I choked. I burned. I hurt, worse than from any injury I'd ever gotten before—even my first death wasn't this bad.

But I just kept on hitting it and hitting it, because that's when you do when you're a Hunter: you don't stop fighting till the demons are dead or you wake up in the Lodge.

The demon exploded in a great ball of ash and fire. Of this size and power, they never went down without a show.

The clouds and the sauces all turned into vapours and screamed back into our weapons. I was barely standing in the middle of the wrecked market, swinging about a pair of panties that had been almost completely eaten away, the rest of me not much better.

Honey Lemon was a few feet in front of me on her back, hands up in the air clutching both of our stockings.

“Good fight.” I mumbled.

Then I died.


	8. Like Many Things, Such As A Strip Club

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Casual suicide joke by a semi-immortal being that can resurrect.

The Hunter's Lodge is like many things, such as a strip club.

You could watch the strippers, you could hear the strippers, you could give the strippers your money, but you couldn't touch the strippers, you couldn't talk too much to the strippers, and you _definitely_ weren't going to sleep with the strippers, no matter how nice they were being to you.

Much in the same way, you could look out the Lodge's west window and see Summerland and all its sunshine and green rollicking fields, you could hear Summerland and all the angels and the good mortal souls frolicking, and you could work as a hunter or some other job so you can pay them and “eventually” join them, but you couldn't go to Summerland, you couldn't speak to anyone in Summerland, and most of the time, you weren't going to Summerland any time soon.

In my case, it was going to be a long, long, _long_ time yet.

Getting killed cost a lot of Wages—short for “Wages of Sin,” otherwise known as “You Literally Paying For All The Shit You've Done While You Were Alive.” Aside from discouraging Hunters from getting murdered, taking too many risks, or committing some therapeutic suicide, we all had a sinking feeling it was how They kept hunters for as long as They could.

Even though there were swarms of qualified husks and damned souls pouring in every three seconds, only a scant few of them would take on the job of a hunter. We were the kind that were that shockingly rare balance between “capable of being or was a violent criminal” and yet “remorseful enough of their actions that they'd want to make up for it than become a demon.”

Aside from shuffling off the mortal coil, doing poorly at your job wasn't going to do you any favours, either. The Hunt Masters discouraged taking too long to dispatch a demon, excessive collateral damage, or being too unsubtle about your hunting, but most of all, they hated mortals getting killed.

“Every life is precious,” so they say, but if my bill is anything to judge by, some folks were more precious than others.

I wasn't going to look at it. You couldn't _make_ me look at it. And most of all, you couldn't make me unfurl that _fucking_ scroll and watch the bottom roll down, to the floor, off to the distance, before it rolled back to me, double-backed on itself, and went off on its second trip of many.

I will admit that I was no saint when I was alive. But the things They will bill you for can be pretty insane and weirdly specific.

Most Hunters used their trips to the Lodge, intentional or not, to hang out, chat, and sympathize. It was a great place to openly talk shop without any worry of getting flak for a mortal discovering the business—brain wiping cost Them, or so They would like us to think—or just gripe about your death and play that perennial favourite, “Who Died The Shittiest Death?”

I just grabbed a chair and sulked in the least crowded corner with the other anti-social Hunters. Though we were a few feet or an elbow jab away from each other, we all kept quiet and minded our own damn business, following an unspoken pact that only assholes like us could understand.

The hunter that got sat on and turned into a smear on that demon's ass was here. She saw me, but fortunately, she seemed to be a veteran that knew you did not bug the people sitting in the Corner.

I spent the time thinking about plans if I got shoved into a new identity, plans if I didn't, and plans now that I knew I was going to be working with Honey Lemon for a long, long time yet—and if that demon was any indication, I was going to need her around constantly.

I didn't think of why or how a demon of that size managed to get into a place like San Fransokyo; there would be a prompt report by the Chroniclers, the people whose job it was to take down history as it actually happened, get the lowdown on the world around us, and make the best guesses as to what kind of shit was going down at the moment.

Speculation only got so far, and at the heart of a good, accurate prediction was that rare mix of exceptional critical thinking, observation, and information gathering skills. That and being privy to Their whispers, snippets of information from omnipotent beings.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder for a moment: how the hell did it happen? Aside from the fact that San Fransokyo had a lot of leftover energies and supernatural nonsense from its rich history, it also had intentional barriers that made it difficult for most demons to make it through a breach and enter the mortal plane.

They were based off Newton's Third Law Of Motion—Action/Reaction, or as I liked to call it, You Kick Me, I Kick You Back.

The more powerful a demon, the more “presence” they had, the amount of power they were using to maintain a physical form on the mortal plane. And the more presence they had, the more energy was needed to break from the Land _Way_ Down Under—let alone consistently refuel, if they were planning on staying.

Most demons of that power didn't even try—usually they just decided to lord over the lesser demons and enjoy their positions high up in the pecking order, as any glance in the Land _Way_ Down Under will tell you. (For those of you that can't see it, imagine a demon sitting on a throne made of other, lesser demons, cackling merrily while they shoot their underlings in the face, one by one just for shits and giggles and you have the usual master/servant relationship down there.)

The ones that did escape were usually small fry abusing the tiny holes and cracks in the system—and there would _always_ be those which made no place truly safe—which is why most every demon was weak enough to be dealt with without much in 5-15 minutes of fighting, or so low on the order that they didn't even blip on our internal radars and were no more threatening than your average human.

And on the rare occasion that Big Game entered the scene, they never came alone, or as a once-in-a-lifetime thing, if the Brief History of Hunters is anything to go by.

The paging system activated and called my name, among others. I had ten seconds to finish my shit in the Lodge before I'd get ported back to earth, down someplace where it was safe and my sudden appearance wouldn't raise too many questions.

I sighed, spent that time wondering where the hell I'd “wake up” now, and in a flash, the Hunter's Lodge disappeared.

* * *

As my luck would have it, I was still GoGo. As my luck would _also_ have it, today's resurrection happened to take place inside a dumpster filled with They-know-what.

My enhanced senses came back to life with a vengeance; I wrinkled my nose (among other involuntary reactions) and threw open the lid.

The (relatively) fresh air was a welcome relief. Honey Lemon standing in front of the dumpster with her nose pinched was… mixed.

“Need some help?” She asked.

I grunted something to the effect of “No.” and climbed out. I looked at myself—fully dressed in my fully repaired death clothes, sans my leather jacket—then at Honey Lemon, smiling in spite of the fact that her fingers barely did anything to block out the smell.

“In case you're wondering, it's still today—I mean, the day we fought that demon earlier and you got killed.”

I looked up. It was late, the streets alight with the buzz of dinghy bulbs, gaudy and filthy advertisements, and the sounds of the night crowd walking the streets, legal and illegal. I started looking for my phone to figure out where the hell I was, then I remembered:

It was in my jacket pocket. And the jacket, and all of its contents, was gone.

“You're six blocks from your apartment; just start heading east then turn south once the roads start going uphill.” Honey Lemon explained. “No, They didn't leave you a care package; no, I don't know why. Also, I brought your bike!” She gestured to the side.

There on the side of the dumpster was my bike, either miraculously willed back into existence by Them, or Honey Lemon had ridden it for me all the way here.

I smiled at Honey Lemon. It was mostly because I'd just had a shitty day, both in out and of the mortal plain, but hey, take what you can get.

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

I pulled my bike out and remounted. “Hey, you climbing on or you going to find your own way back?” I asked.

Honey Lemon shook her head. “I've already got a free cab ride; I figured you might want some alone time to get your bearings back. Besides...” She frowned and gestured to me.

I looked down. Being inside a dumpster had done me little favours, as you might expect.

“… Right. You gonna be okay on your own, Honey?”

She smiled. “I've got pepper spray, some Krav Maga training, and a little gift from Them for insurance; I'll be fine.”

I nodded. “See ya, Honey.”

Honey Lemon waved. “See you, GoGo!”

I kicked off and started riding back to my apartment. Along the way, I thought about how I'd gotten from hating Honey's guts to legitimately liking her in less than 24 hours.

I climbed back in through my fire escape for everyone's benefit. Riding had gotten rid of the looser bits of trash and things I don't want to talk about, the alley there had good places to get rid of the rest, but I was still filthy as hell.

I got a fresh change of clothes, ones with pockets now that my jacket was gone, and headed out to the one bathroom in the apartment.

Wasabi was just about to head out for a late shift at his job. He took one look at me, and all the colour drained from his face.

“Whatever it is, save it for tomorrow.” I said.

It had been a really, really, really long day.


	9. Please Do Panic

What everyone took from the SFPD announcement was “Lock your doors and your windows, hold your loved ones close, we're all going to die.”

The official bit was that civilians were encouraged to stay inside and take a day off work if they could, while the police and teams of professionals investigated the mysterious incidents throughout the city, the same ones that ended up taking a number of innocent lives.

On the bad side of things: this situation was far worse than I thought, with more breaches and demons than I thought, with a total of two Big Game. And as you know, just _one_ is reason enough to raise the red alert.

On the good side of things: no traffic, no lines, and I got to keep my mortal job.

The extra workload from all the other couriers that didn't clock in today, what I now had to deliver alongside my usual route as punishment for my unexplained disappearance yesterday was… so-so.

As I biked through the city, it was hard not to notice how dead and tense everything was. The few people walking about were rushing from building to building, worriedly looking over their shoulders, pointedly avoiding the general areas that had the demons had breached the barriers. Businesses were closed because employees hadn't shown up, you couldn't pay customers to venture out from there homes, or the owners were inside with their guns in their hands and their fingers on the trigger. Police roamed the city, alongside the odd band of hunters and chroniclers sniffing about on their own time.

I passed by the Farmer's Market where I fought and died to that Big Game yesterday. The tunnels it had made from ramming through the buildings were now consistent with a semi breaking through them in a straight, runaway line; the crater where it had sat on that other hunter was gone; and there were bloodstains where there were none.

Might be a little too suspicious if all the evidence of the carnage was the occasional shoe leftover as the demon wrapped their tongues around its prey.

I stamped down on the guilt and the regret; even if we had been here when it breached, Big Game was ALWAYS going to cause a lot of damage, the requisite minimum of two skilled hunters or a small army of them or no.

My phone rang. I instinctively reached into my jacket pocket, and then I remembered that my jacket was still gone.

This time, I couldn't stamp down on the wave of sadness that washed over me; that jacket was the last remnant I had of my mortal life—a shitty mortal life—granted, but it was _my_ jacket, damn it!

I shook my head and answered my phone. “Hello?”

“Hey GoGo!” Honey Lemon said. “You wanna go do something after you get off work today?”

I paused. “What?”

“You know, going out to see a movie, shopping, or just coffee and dessert at my place—I make some amazing brownies, I'll tell you that!”

I blushed. “… Like a date…?”

Honey Lemon giggled. “If you want it to be, I'm not complaining~!”

I blushed even harder. “… Yeah, no thanks; I don't really do… that.”

“Then how about getting you a new leather jacket? You _need_ one, practically or fashionably speaking!”

I frowned. “How did you--” I stopped, and sighed. “Right. Link.”

“And your personal Link, too~” Honey Lemon sang.

“Maybe if there's time after work...” I grumbled.

“Alright! I'll be at home; cafe where I work is closed for today. See you, GoGo!”

“Yeah, see ya, Honey.” I hung up.

For the sake of convenience, efficiency, and transparency, Hunters had little privacy whatsoever, when Links were involved. Links that were tied to a specific person or members of an organization got free reign over whatever information they could ever need, or want.

I was about to slip my phone back into my shorts pocket when it started ringing yet again. “Hello.”

It was my dispatcher. “GoGo, just got word from the police; hope you haven't delivered these packages yet...” They started rattling off tracking numbers, telling me to leave them at the nearest police station, and effectively slashing my route by a good couple of hours. “And if one of those ends up blowing up, don't worry: your GPS will probably help us figure out where to find what's left of you.”

I scowled. “Gee, thanks.”

“Seriously, be careful. It may be nothing, but there's all sorts of weird shit going on since yesterday, I have this feeling they're still around.”

“I will. Anything else?”

“Nope. Now get your butt to the station.” They hung up.

I was about to finally slip my phone back into my pocket when there was yet another call. I looked at the screen this time.

It was from an untraceable number. “X that; head straight to Fred.” A gender-ambiguous, equally unidentifiable voice said before they hung up.

I closed my eyes and scowled. I finally slipped my phone into my pocket and started on a route I knew by heart and really, really, _really_ wished I didn't need to go to, period.

* * *

Fred is a demon.

“But wait, GoGo!” You might be asking. “Isn't your job killing demons?”

Yes it is. But some of those demons are just working stiffs trying to get out of their punishment and maintain their presence for one more day, while others help us out if it means being able to support their cozy existence here in the mortal plain, far from all the fire, the screaming, and the ridiculous overpricing in the Land _Way_ Down Under.

This meant a number of things: some found subtle, safe ways to get their mortal life force fix; others were inside agents on the never-ending war between Hunters and Demons; some were like Links, only even more morally ambiguous.

In Fred's case, he's a resident expert on all things supernatural and occult. An enthusiast in life, he got out of Summerland—more proof he's unquestionably weird—and dedicated his unholy life to understanding and researching the various phenomena and denizens of the three layered existence we mortals and mortal souls lived in.

Ultimately, his goal of complete understanding for all and answers to all the Big Questions was impossible, but he's otherwise very good for figuring things out and getting his… unique perspective on a situation.

Now if only he wasn't such a pain in the ass to deal with.

* * *

Fred's mancave was one of those places where you knew you were there long before you saw it—specifically, you'd get your nostrils assaulted in that uniquely Fred way that was simultaneously confusing, horrifying, and intriguing in a morbid fascination sort of way.

To say he lived in a dump was something of an understatement. The general area was far, far, **far** worse than just being a place where all the world's crap was tossed into so the civilized folks wouldn't have to deal with it. No, this _transcended_ that definition, tried with all its might, and became even _worse._

I'll spare you the details, except one: it was down in the sewer systems. For the rest, just imagine the shittiest, filthiest, and most crime infested ghetto you can think off, multiply that by any value, put it deep underneath the earth, and you wouldn't even get close.

I didn't even bother plugging my nose or putting on any sort of nasal protection; against a stench this horrible, it was just a waste of time, maybe an added two or three seconds of blissful nothing before the smell got you.

Really, the only thing you should do if you found yourself at Fred's was do your business as quickly as possible and hope he'd be quick about it.

And like every other time, he was taking his sweet time with it.

I stood in one corner of his “research room,” doing my very best to not lean onto, touch, or get in too close proximity to anything. Aside from the fact that the place was just fucking _disgusting_ , to say the least, Fred was astoundingly lax with containing potentially lethal demonic or supernatural artifacts and nonsense.

To give you an idea, once he opened a portal into another dimension by accidentally leaving a pizza somewhere, whose “maturation” accidentally formed a ritual circle.

Fred just went about his business, excitedly going about his equipment, his notes, and his many means of communication with the outside world. Every once in a while, he'd take one of the compromised packages, open it up, and look like a kid at Christmas day when he pulled out or examined whatever was inside.

“Oh man, oh man, oh man...” He mumbled the whole while, getting more and more excited the longer he worked.

I resisted the urge at any clocks or time-keeping anything; if it was brutal at the dentist, I've no way of explaining it here at Fred's.

“Aha!” Fred cried as he burst out of a pile of papers, abandoned notes, and books. “I've got it!”

I scowled and tried to wave the ensuing cloud of… somethings… away from my face. I shot him a look that said “What is it?” because I was afraid of opening my mouth down here.

He looked at me and smiled. “We're looking at something big here. Really, really, _really_ big. Like, bigger than the Kaiju Mega-Monster Movie Marathon last year.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Well, what is it?” I wordlessly asked.

Without that sunshine ever leaving him, he said, “I have absolutely no idea!”

If it hadn't meant diving into his mess, I would have throttled him. Instead, I just stood there glaring really, really, _really_ hard at him.

Fred kept on smiling. “Hey, at least now we know we've got something exciting brewing in our midst, right?”

I rolled my eyes. I shot him a look that said, “Anything else?”

“Nada! Have fun on your date with Honey Lemon!”

I blinked and blushed. “How did you know that…?” I mumbled.

Fred smiled. “I didn't. But now I do.”

I scowled even harder, shot him a look that I _wished_ could kill him, and got the hell out of that place.


	10. San Fransokyo Underground

The look on Wasabi's face changed from confusion, to abject horror, to mute resignation. 

At its worst, Fred-ness was potentially lethal; at its best, it was offensive in ways few things in this world could match.

We both silently agreed not to pry into or speak of whatever incident caused me to smell and look like I did right now, then off I headed for a shower with a fresh set of clothes in a specially protected, enchanted plastic bag that'd resist everything short of a nuclear explosion.

I debated setting my used clothes on fire, but then I realized that'd take a lot more preparation and uncomfortable explanations than it was worth. I also debated setting _myself_ on fire, but then I realized that'd mean finding an accelerant that burned clean and didn't leave a relatively less awful petrol smell.

So instead, I shoved the polluted clothes into the bag, made a note to soak them in bleach or heavy duty detergent solution sometime soon, and set my clean clothes somewhere where they wouldn't get wet while I showered.

I used up my entire allowance of hot water, and spent most of a long, brutal hour scrubbing and rinsing myself with freezing cold water. The soap bar I was using started turning dirty more than it was cleaning me halfway through, and I thought of breaking into Wasabi's precious stash of hygiene products that were guaranteed to murder most any kind of germ or bacteria.

I just broke open a new box of generic soap and threw the polluted bar in the trash. No one—not even Wasabi—deserved to have their roomie ruin their soap with Fred-ness.

All that work and effort was damage control at best, though; you didn't get rid of the smell so much as it gradually got weaker and overpowered by your daily life and the city over the course of the next few days. The important thing was that I wasn't a walking biohazard and threat to all that is good and holy though, so I dried off, dressed up, and took my bike to Honey Lemon's place.

I'd had enough of both my jobs, demons in general, and going around without a jacket. You never really knew how convenient and important those pockets were to you till you started habitually shoving things into empty air at about chest height.

* * *

Honey Lemon smiled as she opened her door, then she blinked, and finally her mouth fell in horror and she pulled her dress up to her nose.

“Run in with a demon?” She asked.

“You could say that.” I replied. “Can I come in, or should I stay outside?”

“Wait here.” Honey Lemon said before she shut the door on me. A short time later, she opened it again, this time with a spray can in her hand and a protective mask on her face. “Don't breathe and close your eyes.” She said.

I did as I was told, and Honey Lemon started spraying a thick cloud of mint blue. It almost felt like a mortal version of the curry clouds from our weapons. I stood stock still till Honey Lemon pulled me out of the haze and into her apartment.

“You can breath now.” She said.

I took a small, careful whiff of the air. My eyes went wide open. “It's gone...” I mumbled.

Honey Lemon beamed and capped the spray can. I looked back and saw the fog behind me, still standing and smelling fresh as fuck.

“It's my personal formula against stubborn smells.” She explained as she shut the door. _“_ _Always_ works.”

“You ever tried selling this stuff?" I said. "'Cause I think you can make a lot of money from this.”

Honey Lemon smiled politely. “There's still a lot of kinks to work out, such as the 'not a choking hazard' thing. Kind of have to idiot-proof a household cleaner for those that don't read warning labels, are lazy, and/or cheap. Besides, I need _way_ better equipment, funding, and a lot more time for that.”

I shrugged. “I'm sure there's going to be someone out there that'll pay you to do that; maybe a college someplace?”

There was a flash of such intense pain and regret in Honey Lemon's whole being that I knew I'd accidentally hit a _very_ tender note. Being the smooth operator I was, we stood there in awkward silence, me looking as apologetic as I could, Honey Lemon trying to deal with something that finally cracked her never-ending sunshine and happiness.

“… So, you said something about a new leather jacket…?” I mumbled.

Honey Lemon gave me a small smile. The distraction seemed to work, however little. “Yeah. I know this great place for shopping! … But I have to warn you: it's off the grid.”

I frowned. “How 'off the grid' exactly?”

“It's underground, literally; you know, a kind of secret bazaar where where people set up their businesses because it's hard to get a permit legally, let alone enough regular business to pay for all the rent, the taxes, and all the other costs?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

Honey Lemon beamed once more. “Great! I'll just get some things ready, make a few calls, and we'll be off! There's gum on the table and coffee in the kitchen, if you want some.” She said before she walked off to her room.

Ten minutes later, we were on a bus out to the lesser known and unadvertised parts of the city, before heading down a series of alleyways and side-doors most people only thought existed in fiction. Most everyone involved seemed to know and legitimately like Honey Lemon, though they weren't too happy to see me, with her or not.

I figured out why as soon as I stepped into the bazaar. There was an unmistakable smell mixed in with the usual fair of garbage, cheap and/or bizarre food, and very many unwashed bodies: demonic taint, the kind that only appears when you've had an unholy presence loitering around for a good, long time.

A lot of the shopkeepers and the customers were giving me wary looks, not to mention the guards' always making sure at least one of them had their eye on me. The fact that I'd come with Honey Lemon was about the only reason they hadn't throw off their cover and rushed me all at once.

Honey Lemon frowned. “Something wrong, GoGo?”

“Demons.” I said. “Demons everywhere.”

Honey Lemon nodded slowly then looked around. I could see her make the connections in her brain, see all the details she'd never seen before, all the answers to mysterious questions. Like anything in life, hindsight made everyone an expert.

“I didn't just make a huge mistake, did I…?”

I shook my head. “These guys don't seem to be doing anything but try to fly under the radar, we're cool.” Which was mostly true.

Honey Lemon hummed. “So you're _not_ about to go on a massacre?”

“Technically, I'm supposed to exterminate every last demonic presence in the mortal plain with few exceptions.” I explained. “In reality: no hunter's got the drive or the time for that kind of crap. We're fine unless one of them gets jumpy.”

Honey Lemon smiled. “Good enough for me!”

Conflict solved, we went further in. People stopped caring about me so much once they realized I wasn't there to raid anyone, but the side-glances and the dirty looks were inevitable. Down we went through wings, corners, and a few staircases, exploring a colourful if gritty ecosystem of commerce, illegal activity, and fronts for demonic business, all built on top of abandoned railway systems and forgotten caverns, deep and low-key enough not to attract mortal or supernatural attention.

Eventually, we made it to a shop with four walls, but no sign or a display window. “You're going to love this place,” Honey Lemon said as she pushed open the door. “Minnie makes _amazing_ leather jackets.”

We stepped in through the doors, and I found little reason not to believe her. The walls were made of wood—not the replica crap made of synthetic or cheaper materials, but 100% hardwood with an all-natural grain and a well-kept finish. The ventilation system kept the whole place cool and dry, all but necessary with how much leather was put out on display let alone stocked here.

Jackets, shoes, bags, vests, gloves, holsters, pants—if you could turn an animal's skin into it, this shop had it. Not in shelves upon rows upon racks, mind you, but it didn't take more than a glance to know that you were dealing with top-notch work.

“Hey Minnie!” Honey Lemon cried. “I brought that friend I told you about!”

A woman hunched over a table behind the counter looked up and gave me a calm, unhurried look-over.

Minnie had a look and an aura about her that made her feel like a Native American shaman or healing woman, a real one without all the fake, tourist-friendly thrills and chills, and all the ancient secrets of her ancestors and that which the spirits had good graces to give her. She was just putting the finishing touches on a leather pouch before she gently set them down, and went past a wall of stringed beads nearby and into the backroom.

Minnie returned with a leather jacket, blackish-gray and one I could see wasn't going to cover as much as the old one, let alone the length of my arms or my whole upper body. She looked at me, took the jacket off its hanger and held it out to me by the collar. She nodded once, as if saying it was time for me to find out just how perfect it was.

I hesitated. This was was a far cry from the double rider I used to wear. Sure, that thing was a hand-me down, never fit right because the original owner wasn't my size, to say the least, but I knew I could count on it to cover all the important bits and be my second skin when I needed it to.

Then Honey Lemon squeezed my shoulder, and gave me a smile so bright and reassuring it'd have been unbelievably dickish of me _not_ to try it on.

I slipped my arms through the sleeves, tugged it and pulled it till it felt and fit right, then looked in the mirror. Putting it on only confirmed the fact that it was way too tiny to cover all of me, and yet, I didn't really mind. It felt _amazingly_ good, with all the extra padding, and felt like it could withstand a hell of a lot of abuse with how quality the stitching and the original hide was. Unlike the old one, this didn't hang, catch, or bunch up at all owing mostly to its smaller size and better fit, letting me move to my heart's content.

And besides all that, I looked _damn_ good in it.

_Click._

I snapped out of my trance and noticed Honey Lemon smiling at me and taking yet more pictures; and Minnie with a serene look on her face that felt vaguely religious, as if she had just accomplished yet another great work for the sake of some higher power.

I turned to Honey Lemon and looked her dead in the eyes. “If this is your way of trying to get me to like you, I'm going to tell you this right now:

“It's working.”


	11. Bird Is The Word

There was probably more to the roadside bar Honey Lemon took me to than cheap beer and half-decent food, but I wasn't about to press the point. Management had already seated us in the table closest to the roar and rumble of the highway nearby, where an unlucky “accident” could send me falling off the safety rail and into the path of oncoming traffic.

“So what's good around here, anyway?” I said as I sat down and picked up the cheap, almost plain cardboard menu on our table.

Honey Lemon smiled. “Feeling up to the Roadkill Special?” She asked.

I suddenly felt a revulsion that didn't just turn my stomach, it offended every last sense in my body ten times over and sent me reeling, bending over, and doing it all over again. Honey Lemon and I quickly realized this wasn't because of the food. She was already slipping her foot out of a heel and bracing it against the rungs on the stool, and I was reaching into my jacket when we all heard it:

An ear piercing screech that shook the very air around us, an unholy sound that sent everyone's hands clapping over their ears, before they started screaming and running for cover.

I looked up and saw a giant demon bird swooping down from the sky, making a bee-line right for me and Honey Lemon's table. I threw myself out of my seat, tackled Honey Lemon to the ground, then felt razor sharp talons wrap around my chest.

Up I went, watching bystanders scream and point, Honey Lemon slip her bare foot back into her shoe as she turned it into a gauntlet.

If there was anything good about this, my panties hadn't fallen out of my jacket pocket.

* * *

If you've never had a giant demonic bird try to eat you, I seriously don't recommend it. _Especially_ if you're a hunter, and every other peck is said demon trying to tear your panties from your hands so you won't have a weapon against it.

I couldn't hear anything but the bird flapping its massive wings as we hovered several stories in the air, the buildings and streets down below looking disturbingly like a zoomed-in shot from Google Maps. I could see my panties tearing and ripping apart every time it managed to get a hold of it, then tearing and ripping apart even more when I pulled it back into my hands.

It was pretty much useless as a weapon now, I knew that. But if there was anything I wasn't going to let happen to me, it was lose, _especially_ to a demon

The pecking suddenly stopped as the bird let out an unholy screech. I looked around, before getting blinded by a thick fog of yellow. More curry powder bombs exploded in the air like flak; the bird flapped its wings even harder to blow it away, but the haze wouldn't move just like that.

Unfortunately for me, it flew up even higher into the air. Down below, I heard an extremely loud string of Spanish curses.

There was nothing but a thick haze of curry below me, and what little pockets of clear air there were didn't offer much in the way of vision. The bird turned its attention back to me, its beak clamping down onto my underwear, before tearing it right out of my hands. The demon chomped on my panties, tearing it into confetti before swallowing the scraps and letting out a happy screech.

In the first stroke of luck I've had since the fight started, it hadn't realized I was still wearing a perfectly good pair of panties.

I just really wished I didn't need to go naked from the waist down to use it.

I'd already turned it into a shield when the demon realized that. It lunged downwards to peck at me again, I slammed my weapon into its thigh before it reached. The thing screeched in pain and kept trying to eat me, I kept chopping and slicing until it finally let go.

The good news was, I was free.

The bad news was, I was _also_ falling straight down from several dozen feet in the air, to the hard, unforgiving concrete down below, while also not wearing pants nor underwear.

The wind started screaming at me faster and faster, the asphalt became bigger and bigger, I shut my eyes and waited for the crunch.

It never came. Instead, I found out the uniquely disgusting sound a falling body makes when it hits a cushion of congealed mayonnaise.

I hadn't even realized _what_ I'd landed in when I felt Honey Lemon grabbing me and pulling me right out of that disgusting mess. She shoved her panties into my hand, before grabbing one of my stockings and pulling it down.

The bird came zooming down to finish me off as soon as it saw the giant white dot, but we were already ready for it.

The demon bared its talons to grab me, its blood red eyes on me. I raised my shields and made like I was going to fight it off. Just before its claws grabbed hold of me again, a huge cloud of curry detonated right in front of its face. The bird screeched and flapped about like crazy, hovering just low enough for me to jump up and start going to town on its feathers alongside Honey. Mayonnaise and feathers came raining down from above as we tore its wings apart and turned the rest of it into a giant clumpy, sticky mess.

The demon came crashing to the ground, then it glared at us as it folded its now useless wings.

I jumped off and grinned, while Honey Lemon stuck her tongue out at it.

Let me take this moment to tell you a very important thing about demons: no matter how much they may resemble regular, mortal animals, they do not follow the same rules. For example, when a mortal bird is capable of flight, it has to hop when on the ground, or be an extremely clumsy runner.

 _Demon_ birds, however, tend to be both great fliers and fantastic runners, as the two of us quickly found out when the bird screeched, cleared dozens of feet with one stride, and plucked Honey right off the ground and into its beak.

“GoGo!” Honey Lemon screamed as the bird disappeared around the corner.

I started running after it as fast as I could, but I quickly realized supernatural speed on my feet just wasn't going to cut it. I needed a trail of butter to surf on—and obviously, Honey Lemon couldn't just spray me one this time.

I looked at my shields, and prayed as I turned the dial. “Please work...” I mumbled as I threw the sauce shield down, and planted my foot on it.

The disc started spraying out a thick plume of butter, a spear up front smearing a good three feet in front of me with fresh, slippery, frictionless butter. I wobbled and yelped as I went screaming towards a wall like a cartoon character on a banana peel, before I threw my other shield down, stomped my foot down on it, and prayed again.

Wham.

I scowled, pulled myself out of the me-shaped crater in the wall, and turned around to where the demon had disappeared with Honey Lemon. It was a good five blocks away, pinning Honey Lemon down with its talons to keep her from fighting back against it.

I gritted my teeth, repositioned my shields towards them, sauce up front, blade at back. With a kick of my leg, I went screaming down the alleys and streets, going from zero to 60 in less than ten seconds.

Traffic screeched to a halt and pedestrians dove and screamed as I came zooming past, coating everything unfortunate enough to be within five feet of me with a thick coat of butter. The combination of both shields on the ground gave me control, but not much, like an insanely powerful front-facing boat engine and a tiny, makeshift rudder at back.

The demon pinned down Honey Lemon's arms, leaving her helpless to stop it from taking chunks out of her. Time seemed to slow down as its massive, gaping beak came down onto Honey Lemon's face, and I blasted into the alley.

I spun around, raised my back foot, and hoped to high hell this'd work.

By the unique logic of supernatural combat, being coated in a thick slathering of butter made my bladed shield fly faster than it had ever before, giving it such speed it didn't cut the inside of the demon's beak so much as it lodged in half-width deep. The demon reared its head back and screeched in agony, but all my attention was on Honey Lemon as it staggered back and freed her.

I knelt down and held my arms out. I only had one shot at this, too, and I wasn't about to fuck it up, either.

For a split second, my fingers touched something. I lunged forward, grabbed it, and pulled whatever it was up. I quickly shifted the weight around, till I had Honey Lemon safely in my arms. Her clothes were torn in places, her skin was roughed up and cut, and she was almost completely covered in butter, but she was alive, and that was all that mattered to me.

Time slowed down again as she turned those big green eyes of hers at me and smiled. Before I could smile back, those same eyes opened wide in shock. There was no way she could have told me fast enough, nor was there anyway I could have stopped without my other shield.

Wham.

I groaned as I crumpled to the floor, letting Honey Lemon back down to the ground as gently as I could before I curled up over her. Chunks of concrete, dust, and wood rained down on us as light poured in from the massive hole up front.

I looked out and saw the demon still standing where it was earlier, desperately trying to get my shield out from its mouth.

“Looks like the inside of its mouth's the weak spot...” Honey Lemon mumbled.

I groaned again. “Fantastic… am I going to have to get eaten and hope I can kill it before it kills me, or do you have a plan?” I asked.

Honey Lemon looked at the demon, then back at me. She smiled as she grabbed my shoulder with her sauce gauntlet hand.

I felt power surge into me, the salsa pouring into my jacket and imbuing every last inch of it with its demon killing power. The leather reacted to the enchantment perfectly, as if it had been made specifically to handle supernatural nonsense like this—which I quickly realized it had.

Honey Lemon let go, and started dragging me back out the hole. Though the jacket still looked completely normal and inconspicuous on the outside, inside, I could feel the intense heat of the salsa, glowing and humming like a bomb just waiting to go off.

The bird finally got my shield out of its mouth, and turned its attention to us again, looking pissed off as hell. It clawed the ground, before letting out a massive screech as it came roaring at me. Honey Lemon jumped to the side, while I looked it dead in the eyes.

“Smile, you son of a bitch!” I yelled just before it scooped me up into its jaws.

It snapped down on my whole upper body, my jacket exploded, and there was suddenly salsa _everywhere._ The demon reared its head back, choking and gagging on the sauce erasing it from this existence. I slammed my one shield down on the inside of its mouth for extra insurance, when the thing decided it was taking it with me and swallowed me whole.

What's the inside of a demon's stomach look like? Nothing.

A great, vast expanse of complete darkness, true black, and the inescapable feeling that things were wrong, wrong, _wrong_ as you felt your life force rapidly drained away from you till there was nothing left.

There was no place for logic, nor sense, nor normalcy here. I clicked the sauce shield to salsa, started smashing and swinging it wherever it felt like I hit home. All around me, the salsa was turning into a red mist before flat out disappearing, and the rest of me was starting to follow suit.

I opened a tear back outside, and accidentally smacked Honey Lemon right in the face, giving her a throbbing pain in her nose and a thick coating of salsa. I stumbled back out to the alley, she caught me and pulled me out from tear we made in the demon's body.

Blazing hot sauce spewed out everywhere before the bird gave out a final, agonized cry and exploded into a giant pillar of flames.

Honey Lemon pulled me me right up to her body and held me tight as the demon's ashes filled the alley. “You okay?!” She cried.

“No.” I croaked.

Then I died. Again.


	12. Paint It Pink

Pink. Pink everywhere.

Part of me thought that I'd ended up getting resurrected in some twisted motel or a nightmarish correctional facility, before I got a whiff of great smelling, horrible tasting coffee and a unique blend of natural and floral scents.

Honey Lemon walked over with a cup of coffee in hand, dressed in nothing but a tank top and shorts. She looked even taller than usual, probably because how short those shorts were, and how so much longer it made her bare legs look, but it was more likely because I was sprawled out on her bedroom floor.

She smiled. “Welcome back!”

I groaned and took an account of myself. All limbs and organs intact, so far as I could tell, still looking like me, and once more, no leather jacket.

This time hurt even worse because I had just got that thing and it was _my_ jacket, more so than the old one.

I sucked it up and picked myself off the floor, grabbing the mug from Honey Lemon and giving myself a much needed dose of blazing hot caffeine. The haze of death and sleepiness lifting over me, I finally noticed my jacket hanging on a coat wire, right on the hook behind Honey Lemon's bedroom door.

I could feel her smile beside me. “I decided to save it just in case you didn't resurrect with it again. On a related note, I can now add 'robbed a corpse' to the list of horrible things I've done!”

I couldn't stop my lips from spreading into a huge grin.

* * *

There was, yet again, no evidence pointing to anything concrete, and Fred still needed more data. It was _way_ too late to show up at my mortal job and actually do anything useful, so I ended up staying at Honey Lemon's, sitting with her on her couch while chewing a fresh stick of gum, with a cup of terrible coffee in my hands.

“Stop me if I'm out of line here, okay?” Honey Lemon said, I nodded, and she continued. “Look, I know we've been working together for like what, two, three days, but we've already taken out two Big Game demons, you died each time, and we're already at the level of casually crashing at my place whenever, so shouldn't we at _least_ know about each other more than me being the crazy adrenaline junkie chick, and you being the hunter who keeps getting screwed over by pretty much everyone?”

I frowned, took a sip of my coffee, and recoiled in disgust at the kick. “If you want to share life stories, you go first.” I replied.

Honey Lemon smiled. “Well, I guess you could say it all started when I blew up the tool shed at my house.”

I blinked. “That's one way to get someone's attention...”

Honey Lemon chuckled. “It's one of my favourite story starters, never gets old. Anyway, my parents weren't too happy to learn that I was playing with things I shouldn't have had in the first place, and knew how to combine them to make some pretty epic explosions. Like most kids in Big Trouble, I was grounded forever—which was somewhere around a month—but unlike those kids, they tried to get to the bottom of how an elementary student gets their hands on industrial grade chemicals, and wouldn't stop till they got there.

“Back then, I was using a complicated network of brothers and sisters, cousins, and classmates—exchanging this for that, promising someone a tray of brownies for a pint of this, doing a few favours today so they'll get me something I want next week—you know, just schoolkid bartering, but instead of trading cards and accessories I was smuggling hazardous chemicals and professional grade lab equipment, plus getting advice from drug dealers and wayward classmates about the best ways to get a setup with minimal fuss, minimal attention, and minimal funds.

“And when my parents and the rest of the adults came storming up to my school en masse, you better _believe_ all of those connections clammed up in a hurry. Suddenly the adults realized where all the inventory errors were coming from, why there was one less bottle in the locked cabinet, and where their kids got that plate of brownies from, and boy, they weren't ever going to forget it.

“It should have been the end to my amateur chemist days--and for a few weeks, it was. Unfortunately, my parents' crusade stirred up a lot of noise, the media caught a whiff of it, and some people decided to delve deeper into the story; coming to our house for exclusive interviews, people asking me personally why I did it, other kids calling me over Facebook and begging me to tell them my secrets of running a one-kid smuggling ring, those kinds of things.

“And that was how I met her.” Honey Lemon sighed dreamily.

I looked at her, felt a bad feeling rise up in the pit of my stomach, and scowled.

“She was _perfect._ Insanely hot, freakishly intelligent just like me, and just as passionate about chemistry but better at hiding her experiments. She became my new best friend, and eventually the first in a long, _long_ line of bad girls and worse relationships.

“We did _everything_ together: hang out, experiment, talk science, hot girls, and fashion—she was even my first for a lot of other things, too...~” Honey Lemon blushed and giggled.

I scowled even harder.

“We stayed together all the way till the end of high school, me being an honour student and all-around girl next door by morning, being a budding drug dealer and mad scientist by night. She was always there to help me out—get more materials for my personal experiments, find a reason to get me out of class so I could catch up on my sleep, even just make me a cup of coffee for all-nighters at the lab or the library.

“She's the reason I found out about that underground bazaar, you know? Summer vacation, so many years ago, she decided to go take me someplace shopping, where I could buy my own supplies and equipment direct, not have to go through the middlemen anymore. She was also the reason I know a lot of useful things that I do now, like how to make things like my all-purpose industrial strength deodorizer, how to pick a lock, and how to know you're getting quality ingredients for drugs and projects.

“The whole thing was straight of a seriously fucked up fairy tale, and I loved every single minute of it. Obviously, it wasn't going to end happily ever after—it never does—but I thought it'd be different for me. That's what happens when you're in love, everything's going great, and you're having the time of your life every single day, you know?

“Bad things just never happen, ever, so you think it's going to stay that way till you die, and then one day, everything goes straight to shit, and you never, ever saw it coming...”

Honey Lemon hung her head and took a sad sip of her coffee. I hesitantly reached over and patted her on the back.

“You don't need to tell me the rest, if you don't want to.” I said.

She turned her eyes to me and smiled. “Too bad: I was just about to get to that.

“High school doesn't last forever, obviously; come junior and senior year, everyone's suddenly talking about college and what they're going to do after graduation. Thanks to a really persistent guidance counselor, I got it in my head that I didn't _want t_ o become a full-time career criminal, I wanted to become a legitimate chemist who got research grants, not unmarked packages full of bills, untraceable messages, and typewritten instructions.

“She was all for it, actually! Helped vouch for me with all the interviews, covered up all the illegal parts of my life, even went with me to my interview, the one that'd decide if I got into the college I wanted or not—and when that college is SFIT, you can bet I was just one giant bundle of nerves.”

The bubble I was blowing popped.

“Know the school too, huh?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah...” I mumbled as I got the exploded mess back into my mouth.

Honey Lemon nodded, and continued. “I got accepted, actually! I still remember opening that letter on my kitchen table back home, seeing that big stamp on the front, and then _everything_ after that was just _screaming._ I _freaked out_ for a good three days and _everyone_ was so happy for me, especially her!

“My whole life was ahead of me: accepted into one of the most prestigious colleges in the world, on a scholarship thanks to being an honor student, and a _whole_ lot of cash saved up for a lot of rainy days in bank accounts few people knew I had.

“Then, just a day before I was due to leave for this city, I got a different letter.” Honey Lemon looked at me. “I think you can guess what it was all about.”

I frowned and nodded.

“I headed out to San Fransokyo anyway—couldn't stay home, not with what happened. They didn't divulge _everything,_ because that'd get me 25 to life, but they did say enough to make SFIT change their minds in a hurry. She offered me a way back into the business, but I wasn't so smitten and stupidly in love not to realize she had a part in it.

“Long-story short, it was a bad break-up, I got a legitimate job, and other legal forms of income. Sometime between then and now, I've also had a long string of 'bad girl' girlfriends that have all ended in roughly the same way, but I don't think you'd be interested in hearing about that.” Honey Lemon smiled knowingly.

I quickly drained the last of my coffee.

“When I look back on it, she was probably a demon, or a mortal the demons were using. Explains a lot of things, like how she always managed to find a solution to something I thought was impossible, with the help of her 'friends.'

“Anyway, that's my story, what's yours?”

I put down the cup on the table, took a deep breath, and told her.

“Basically, gangs. Ran with the wrong kinds of people in exchange for money and better bike parts, ended up getting kicked out of school because I was a dumbass kid who cared more about their ride than their future.”

I looked down. “… Eventually managed to get myself wasted, ended up at the Land _Way_ Down Under, they offered me a job as a Hunter, and I took it.”

Now it was Honey Lemon's to touch me as she put a hand on my shoulder. “Bad death?” She asked.

I looked away. “Yeah.”

The full story was that I died cold and alone in a dark, dank alley somewhere, curled up into a little ball of sadness, pain, and anger, a few minutes after all of my so-called “friends” abandoned me when a turf contesting had gone horribly, _horribly_ wrong.

Oh, and I also died a virgin, can't forget that.

We spent the next couple of minutes sitting down on Honey's couch together, drinking terrible coffee and chewing bubblegum in an awkward silence--the kind that comes from just having told the other about your messed up life story and both of you being unable to decide who had it worse.

“Man, we are both really, _really_ fucked up people.” I said, breaking it.

Honey Lemon chuckled. “Yep! But isn't everyone messed up in their own ways?”

“Not usually by this much, though.”

“True. But life's about finding people that don't mind your being really fucking screwed up compared to most people, I guess.” Honey Lemon smiled.

I looked at her and smiled back.

In the back of my head, I was waiting for something to happen to ruin the moment. Maybe a phone call would come, maybe I'd feel a new demonic presence, maybe one of our bodies would betray us by doing something awful and mood-killing.

But it never came. A full minute passed without anything happening to take our eyes away from each other, those smiles from our faces, the space between us any further or closer than just a few inches away. It would have been the perfect moment to kiss her or say “I love you” or something else that was romantic, stupid, cheesy, or a combination of all three.

So obviously, I wussed out and pulled away. “… I think I have to go, go… patrol the streets or... something.” I said like the cool, confident lady-killer that I was.

Honey Lemon looked disappointed for a few moments, before that smile was back on her face once more. “Have fun, GoGo! Oh, and if you end up back here, I won't mind if you stay the night.” She winked at me.

I blushed.

Then, Honey Lemon grabbed both our mugs and took them away, leaving me to stew on her couch.

“What the hell have I gotten myself into…?” I mumbled to myself.


	13. Shield Surfing and Stupidity

“SCREEE--” The husk manning the voice-box went into a hacking fit, recovered, and took a deep breath. “--EEEEECCCHHH!”

You had to admire their dedication to making the training room recreation of the demon bird as authentic as possible. It was kind of pointless, though, since the “demon” was obviously one highly complex machine being operated by a small squad of husks working in concert, I could see some of them through the gaps and the cracks for the joints, and They and the Lodge decided to give the head giant red googly eyes visible from space.

Just like the original fight, the “bird” swooped down from above, eyes on me. Just like the original fight, Honey Lemon bombed it with a curry grenade, and the “demon” went hacking and coughing—though this time, it was that unique sound of many not-quite-damned souls wheezing and gagging at the same time. Unlike the original fight, however, I launched my bladed shield at one of its legs, the mayo-reinforced cable attached to it neatly wrapping around the "bird's" thigh, before the disc sank in deep and anchored it.

I grabbed the other end, the husks recovered, and up the “demon bird” went, all according to our latest plan.

It was only after my feet had left the ground that I realized it was a _really_ fucking stupid plan.

The wind rushed at me at dozens of miles per hour, and had I shut my eyes. I went banging and crashing into fire escapes, the sides of concrete buildings, and the occasional sign, dangling and swinging from the rope, at the mercy of the laws of physics and the “bird's” erratic, spastic maneuvering through the urban jungle that was the recreation of San Fransokyo.

The smart thing to do, I realized in hindsight, was to let go of the cable and fall back down to earth—even if we weren't aware of the cushioning powers of supernatural mayo, I'm sure Honey Lemon would have figured it out anyway. But, unfortunately, being incredibly determined like me also came with the consequence of being really, _really_ late to realizing when was a good time to quit.

I tightened my grip on the cable, the mayo harmlessly freezing my skin onto it to strengthen my hold. There was a break from the hitting buildings and other hard objects, so I opened my eyes, just in time to see the giant, smug face of some nameless, handsome shirtless male model coming at me.

Crack.

I accidentally took out Mr. Pretty Boy's face, leaving an ugly, jagged, person-sized hole where it was. The debris flew off my face, I opened my eyes again, and this time, met a giant pair of pearly whites.

Crack.

That billboard was going to be wishing for a new set of two front teeth this Christmas. Some of the broken chunks stuck to my face, leaving me with only one eye to see—surprise, surprise!--yet another billboard coming at me. I didn't even bother to read or see what it was this time.

Smack.

This billboard was a lot sturdier than last two, the “bird” flapping its wings like crazy, the steel backing behind it slowly groaning and bending, and me slowly sliding up the length of it by the cable I was still stubbornly holding onto.

The plan was probably going to keep being terrible and a failure, I realized, but there was some part of me that thought I could still turn this around.

Or maybe that was just me being a massive dumbass. Wouldn't be the first time, really.

The husks inside decided they'd had enough of driving me through billboards and flew up. In an impressive display of group coordination and skill, they spun the “bird” in mid-air, neatly swinging me up like a pendulum, then snapping me into their beak like a yo-yo before swallowing me whole.

There was no explosion of salsa this time, seeing as me and Honey Lemon agreed the winning by suicide attacks needed to stop.

Inside the “demon,” I ignored the internal view of the mechanics, the husks hard at work inside, and the motivational posters that had been put up for both our benefits. I started hitting my sauce shield at the simulated stomach, the large space flooding with salsa before a loud “DING!” sounded and I found myself back in the circle and the vast, empty expanse of the stock training room.

I sighed and stretched my arms, both shields back to being panties in my jacket pockets. “Got any more plans you'd like to test out?” I asked.

“Not in the mood for anymore 'What if?' actually;” Honey Lemon replied as she stepped out of her heels and stretched her legs out. “Much as it surprises me, killing demons is actually starting to get old.”

“Might be all the stopping and planning to think for more than five seconds.” I mumbled. “We calling it a day?”

Honey Lemon slipped her feet back into her heels. “Actually, I was hoping we could squeeze _one_ last thing before we go.”

I looked at her curiously, then wordlessly gave her the go ahead.

“Want to go practice butter surfing?” Honey Lemon smiled hopefully.

I scowled. _“No.”_

“Aww, why not? It's what saved my life yesterday, that proves it could come in real handy in the future!”

“Look, that? That was desperate times and desperate measures; trust me, it's not as easy as it looks, and if you think I had even the slightest bit of control, you think _wrong_. I'm not shield surfing again, no way.”

Honey Lemon smirked. _“Wow._ Never thought I'd see the day you'd chicken out.”

Much as I tried, I couldn't hide how close she'd to home she'd gotten. I scowled at Honey. “Yeah, I think it's perfectly okay to chicken out of dumb, dangerous shit that's just dumb and dangerous.”

“ _Or_ maybe you're just afraid of showing me what a terrible surfer you really are.”

I glared at her. “Believe me, you wouldn't be saying that if you could surf on my shields, too.”

“I think you're trying to tell me reasons, but all I hear are excuses.” Honey Lemon said calmly.

I stormed up to her till we were face-to-face. Or rather, my face to Honey Lemon's midsection—I was vertically challenged, she was freakishly tall. I raised my finger up. “Give me one good reason I should try to surf again.”

“A race,” Honey Lemon replied. “Your shields vs my gauntlet, butter only. You win? You will never have to surf ever again, and I'll never bring it up ever again. I win? … Well, I'm still trying to think of what I want, actually.”

There were only two ways this was going to end: one, I'd do the mature thing and walk away from her challenge, and we could silently agree I wasn't ever going to voluntarily shield surf ever again; or two, I'd do the _stupid_ thing and give Honey Lemon exactly what she wanted, and ultimately lose out of a paradoxical, instinctive need to win.

No guesses as to what choice I made.

The same misguided sense of pride that got me killed the first time around overrode my rational thinking and sense of self-preservation. “You're on.” I said as I held out my hand.

Honey Lemon beamed as we shook hands and sealed the deal. She pulled out her phone with her free hand. “Ten minutes practice?”

“Fine with me.”

We went our separate ways, two identical skate parks/obstacle courses/parkour training grounds zooming in around us, mirror images of each other. I turned the underwear back into shields, found a nice, flat section of ground, and with two smooth motions, threw them down and started butter surfing again.

Not two seconds later, I zoomed straight into a concrete wall.

So started my ten minutes of practice, best summed up as a lot of “hitting large, heavy objects, careening all about the place uncontrollably, and stubbornly believing I had even the slightest bit of control over where I was going once the shields started sliding.” I learned three very important things in that ten minutes:

One, I could achieve roughly the same results by strapping a high powered rocket to my back and skates on my feet, provided the rocket was incapable of vertical take-off.

Two, there were three forms of steering: almost completely useless shimmying and nudging; gentle, wide turns; and hard stops followed by a change in direction, ideally by me stepping on the back of my blade shield and digging into the ground to stop myself, mostly by me hitting a wall or other obstacle that had enough weight and mass to counter my velocity.

And three, terrain wasn't really an issue; the butter automatically became thicker and neatly made a buffer over gravel, dirt roads, and small potholes. Short of a really deep hole or a long, straight fall down, I'd be zooming completely out of control whatever the road looked like.

Sometime in that ten minutes, I risked a look at Honey Lemon's side. Her heels on her butter trails weren't as fast as my shields by a long a shot, but to compensate, she had outstanding control and grace, as demonstrated by her happily figure skating on a thick pool of butter.

She did a twirl in the air and shot me a knowing wink. I looked away and surfed straight into a wall I should have known was right in front of me.

The ten minutes ran out, and to the starting line we went, gear already ready to go. For the sake of fairness, we had the Lodge's experts design us a course, half a relatively simple stretch of long, clear paths, curves, and a few hard turns, half a giant obstacle course that was full of sudden twists and dips, convoluted paths, and even some angled to completely vertical roads.

The second part was mine, to compensate for the sheer speed my shields could get to.

With the sound of the starting gun, we disappeared into our respective courses. Describing my experience in that urban-inspired hell hole blow-by-blow  would be boring and repetitive, so let's just say it was a long, long, _long_ series of crashing into things, smacking head-on into walls, and whole lot of getting covered in several inches thick butter.

By the time I made it through to the other end _way_ longer than I would have liked, Honey Lemon was standing after the finish line, sitting cross legged on the floor and deep in meditation. How far behind I was was really hammered home when I had to physically shake her out of her deep trance.

Honey Lemon blinked the haze from her eyes, looked at me, and smiled. To her credit, she didn't say anything to rub it in.

I sighed and silently asked her what it is she wanted with a look.

“I'll tell you the details when we get back to the real world; gotta consult my planner, make a few calls first, consult my schedule.” She explained as she got up. “Let's call it a day! See you, GoGo!”

I grunted. “See ya, Honey.”

The training room around me disappeared and I was back to sitting on my bedroom window, feet on the fire escape outside. No time had passed here in the mortal plain as usual, thanks to the screwy rules They forced us to work with. I shook my head and headed back down to my bike.

I spent the rest of the night doing late night deliveries, assignments my mortal job had given me to make-up for all the times I didn't show up these past few days. It was a pretty easy sell back at the office, seeing as most every other courier that wasn't a Hunter or potentially suicidal wouldn't even go out of their houses to get their mail, what with all the shit that's been happening lately.

A few hours before midnight, Honey Lemon told me what she wanted for her prize, and I _immediately_ regretted ever taking that stupid bet.


	14. A Night To Remember You'll Want To Forget, 1 of 2

As you might have assumed from that “died a virgin” bit I mentioned some time ago, I've never been much for dating.

The more accurate assumption would be that I was a caustic, sarcastic, and socially awkward bitch who naturally repelled other people, and most especially other lesbians who could have been mutually interested in me. Plus, I was also a complete, absolute dork when it came to romance of any sort.

The situation hasn't really changed since I resurrected as a Hunter, for these reasons: one, being dead had done absolutely nothing for my personality; two, they resurrected me as a fully-functional and legal adult which allowed me to bypass the all-important, still supervised, “people give a shit about you” developmental years of teenagehood; three, being a Hunter wasn't really conducive to a social life, since you constantly had to run off at odd hours for unexplained reasons; and four, being dead had done absolutely nothing for my inability to interact with the same sex, either.

So you can imagine that I might have had some issues with Honey Lemon asking me out for a date, and there being no polite, non-douchebag-gy way for me to refuse.

I distracted myself by doing a couple of extra routes to waste time till the date. I had hoped for another Big Game demon making an appearance, or failing that a bunch of regular demons, but it seems that the weirdness wasn't happening in my part of the city for now. Having absolutely no hobbies except running and training at the Lodge (which wouldn't pass time in the mortal plain, the one thing I actually needed), I spent the rest of the hours sitting at my kitchen table, almost perfectly still but for my breathing.

One might assume I was in a state of meditative calm, but it was in fact the opposite. I had bypassed the point of panicking and jabbering incoherently; banging my head against a wall; or sitting in a corner rocking back and forth while weeping, and instead entered a state of ironically tranquil distress that only looked like calm.

“Something up, GoGo?” Wasabi asked.

He was lucky he'd asked when he did, because he'd somehow not triggered a disastrous change in my mood, probably to the state of “waving my arms in the air and making loud noises” panicking.

I looked at him from the corner of my eyes and grunted.

“Look, as the stranger you just happen to live with: whatever it is that's bugging you, I'm sure it'll work out.” Wasabi smiled.

I cracked a small smile back.

“And if it doesn't, let me know if I should start looking for a new roommate.”

That small smile disappeared, and I was back to my default “bitch face.”

I still appreciated it, though. I needed all the help I could get, and I wasn't about to get put through “Being A Decent, Sociable, And Normal Person Who Can Go Out On Dates Without Completely Fucking Them Up” boot camp any time soon.

Ultimately, that I actually liked Honey Lemon back and wanted the date go well was the factor that ensured it would be a complete, absolute disaster.

* * *

We were going to meet at the park before going for a movie and a late dinner, so I went in my jacket, jeans that weren't ripped up (intentionally or no), my nicer pair of combat boots, and a shirt; all of them showing the least signs of wear and tear from my job as a Hunter, their numerous trips to the budget laundromats, or just the general lack of care and attention I'd given them. (Sue me. Hunters don't spend much time hanging out in nice, cushy offices, or at fancy parties, or being nice, cleaned up, and presentable to other people.)

Conversely, Honey Lemon had cleaned up, dressed up, and _then some,_ the end result I can only describe as _“really_ fucking hot.” Red dress that showed off her long, smooth, and bare legs; hem that was cut short to be teasing and sexy but not _too_ short to be trying too hard; matching red stiletto heels; hair done up in some style I can't name but can say looked _damn_ good on her, especially with those loosened strands falling over her face in strategic areas; and red lipstick and eyeshadow that made her green eyes look far brighter, and much more alluring than I'd ever seen them.

 _'_ _All she need_ _s_ _is_ _horns,_ _a_ _tail, and wings, plus the ability to suck the life out of me,_ _'_ a thought I had as I found myself staring at her before mindlessly ramming my bike into the fence behind her, then sending myself flying over it and falling on the grass on the other side.

Once again I found myself sprawled out on the ground and staring up at Honey Lemon. My self-disgust quickly turned into embarrassment and panicking as I found I could see straight up Honey Lemon's dress, among other interesting new details. She lowered herself down to me on her high heels, and subtly stuffed a used pair of red panties into my jacket pocket.

“Just in case~” She said as she helped me back up.

If she had meant to imply two _very_ different situations and two _very_ different contexts, she succeeded.

I tried to distract myself and stop blushing so much by rubbing the grass stains of my clothes. It didn't work, I only ended up looking stupider, and of course Honey had something in her purse that would deal with them quite nicely, making the action moot, too.

“You always a walking Miracle Cleaner dispenser?” I joked as she worked on the stains on the back of my jeans. (It kept me from thinking about how, technically speaking, she was touching my butt.)

Honey Lemon beamed so brightly I didn't need to see her. “It never hurts to look good! Which you do, by the way,” she purred.

I was suddenly extremely aware that I hadn't complimented her on her appearance, even if my crashing and injuring myself by being distracted by her hotness might have been more than enough.

“Yeah, it doesn't and uh… you look good tonight, too.” I mumbled. “Like, _really_ good....”

Honey Lemon just so happened to finish cleaning me up when it would be the perfect time to look me in the eyes, and smile in a way that made me even more flustered, red, and aware of just how in-over-my-head I was.

“Thanks~” Honey hummed.

I quickly grabbed the nearby rail just in case. “So… you said something about a movie?” I asked in the smoothest way I could—“Not At All.”

“6:45 showing, plenty of time to get there.” Honey Lemon replied. “Unless you've got other plans in mind…?” She looked at me suggestively, as if the talk of a movie was just code for some secret ploy that wouldn't involve films in the slightest.

My brain suggested _quite_ a lot of those kinds of plans, but I just said “No.” and off the two of us went to a nearby movie theater. It was an indie place, one that made its living showing old movies at low prices for cult classic enthusiasts, cheapskates, and those that wanted a dark, quiet place in public without too many people around.

Part of me was happy I could keep my hands busy wheeling my bike to someplace I could safely leave it, part of me was sad I couldn't hold hands with Honey Lemon as we walked.

* * *

The flick we watched was part of a long-running Action/”Horror” franchise that was basically lots of T&A stupidly, wonderfully done excessive violence, blood and gore; and some actually pretty good acting.

The movie wasn't Emmy, Sundance, or Art House material, and everyone that worked on it was well aware of that. They were also clearly passionate about their genre, which was probably why the whole “Lesbian Horror Hunters” series had such a special place in small-time critics' and film cultists' hearts, alongside making a healthy profit, enough money to make a new one every other year.

It was the best movie I'd ever seen alive or dead, mostly because it was unabashedly stupid and fun yet still made an effort for some semblance of sense and a plot; one of the directors made no secret of their experience directing and making professional quality pornos; and the boring parts were anything but since I had Honey Lemon, a lot of darkness, and few other people around.

Still, I couldn't help but cringe every time the demons from Hell were mentioned, when there was an extended scene of helpless civilians getting eaten and killed in dumb and hilariously bloody ways, and when the protagonists complained about their jobs being their entire lives these days.

There was also anticipating a sickness in my stomach that wasn't the discount popcorn or the soda every time the movie set up a “suspenseful” buildup before it was back to “Dismembering, Head-Exploding, and Setting Bad Guys On Fire Time.”

I'm sure Honey Lemon hadn't intended to make me feel bad, but it wasn't hard to notice when the teasing and groping during the boring parts started turning into more reassuring and calming touching.

The  climax where  the protagonists kill the demons with (holy) flamethrowers while wearing intentionally revealing outfits entertained and distracted us for a good long while, but eventually, the lights came on, we had to shuffle out of the theater, and  we were back to walking in the quiet, mostly empty streets.

“Did you like the movie?” Honey Lemon asked. I could tell what she really meant to say was: “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it was pretty fun! Stupid, but in a good way.” Which I hoped she would take to mean: “Yeah, I'm good, don't feel bad about it.”

Honey Lemon nodded. “One of my ex-girlfriends introduced me to the series,” she said. “We might not be on speaking terms anymore, but I haven't stopped loving the movies one bit.” Rough translation: “If hit a sore note by bringing up something from _your_ awful past, I am totally cool with me apologizing and us never seeing these films ever again.”

I had enough of that “polite” code talk just then and quickly pulled her aside into an alley. The other people around and the one policewoman took notice and assumed we were doing something that definitely wasn't me and Honey Lemon having a serious talk.

“Look, Honey, whatever it is that's bugging me? It's just me and my fucked up life—unlife, whatever. This date's been fun.” I smiled. “It's not your fault, okay?”

Honey Lemon quickly smiled back.

It would have been another fantastic moment to kiss her, then probably give the policewoman something actually illegal to break up in case they decided to investigate, but again, I wussed out and just awkwardly held out my hand.

“Dinner?” I asked.

“Love to.” Honey Lemon replied, and out we stepped back to the streets.

For  a while,  all I could think about was how damn nice  holding her hand and walking together felt.  Cliche and cheesy as it was,  I wished we could just  be like that always , just a couple enjoying a night out,  just being with  each other, no  caring  about demons or any supernatural weirdness whatsoever...

… But obviously, it couldn't last.


	15. A Night To Remember You'll Want To Forget, 2 of 2

Dinner was fantastic. It could have been the fact that I was so used to processed foods, canned goods, and dollar menu options, and food that was made out of fresh ingredients and prepared by an actual, trained chef was always an objective step-up, but still, I enjoyed myself very much.

The rest of the date went wonderfully, actually. Picture perfect, idealistic, great scenes for a RomCom montage; the best-case-scenario two batches of damaged goods like us could have, you could say. It left me in such a good mood that I agreed to all of Honey Lemon's requests for selfies at almost every little thing like getting to the restaurant, our meals arriving, and before she called for a cab on the way home. I smiled in every one of them, to boot.

“I had a great time tonight, GoGo, thanks.” Honey Lemon said as we stood at the street curb, waiting for a taxi along with other couples.

“Yeah, I did too.” I said. “It was nice. Real nice.”

An awkward silence fell between us, nothing but the sounds of the cabs coming in or driving off, and people hailing them or getting in. Honey Lemon looked at me expectantly, patiently waiting for me to say something. I looked back at her to ask if she was serious, but Honey Lemon's expression never changed.

Finally, I sighed and gave in. I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, then turned to Honey Lemon. “Do you want to do this again sometime?” I asked. “You know… go out for dinner again, a movie, or something?”

Honey Lemon beamed. “I'd love to.” She said.

Details would have to wait as it was finally Honey's turn in the line of taxis. I opened the door for her because I was sure I was going to need all the brownie points I could get in preparation for next time. And as I did so, we both saw something in the rearview mirror:

A shadowy figure looking at us from the alley, one that wasn't so much blending into the shadows as it _was_ the shadows.

Honey Lemon looked at me, but I shook my head. We wordlessly said goodbye, and off I jogged to investigate, alone.

I'll always wonder if things would have been different if I had Honey Lemon with me then.

My mystery demon had disappeared. Common tactic: a game of hide-and-seek, to lure a Hunter away from major streets and public transportation, where help would be slow to arrive or wouldn't notice that there was a malevolent demonic presence around. I was feeling pretty good and confident from the date, and I had both mine and Honey's panties at the ready, so I was sure I could handle whatever was waiting for me at the end of this chase.

We went down alleys, across streets, and through an old building, until finally, we came to an abandoned warehouse, one with a big wooden gate made of aged and weathered boards. The only light aside from the street was a dinghy bulb hanging just above the doors; I looked at the building's windows and saw it swinging glass panel design, great for sneaking in or out.

It wasn't much of a question of _if_ my target had gone inside that place, so much as _what_ exactly would be waiting for me behind it. I readied my weapons, set the sauce shield to Salsa, then called Honey Lemon about my location. I finally set a timer that'd send automatically send out a distress signal in fifteen minutes, if this demon proved to be problematic.

 _'_ _No need to get reckless,_ _'_ I thought to myself, before I chopped off the wooden bar keeping the gates together, and stepped in.

You know how they say some people can be so consumed by hate they turn into a monster, someone completely different than who they were before? Same thing can happen to mortals when exposed to demonic energies or possession, and except in a much more literal, much more overt sense.

The demon before me was a human, a long time ago, but now, the only humanity left in it was the figure in the center of that tower of writhing black mass, and whatever had kept me from feeling the sick feeling in my stomach until I saw the “eyes” of the red-lined mask on its “face.”

Half-a-dozen spears sprouted out from it, I turned tail and frantically clicked the sauce shield to Butter. I'd entered through a tiny crack in the gates and slipped out the same way, the demon followed suit by punching several holes through the wood, before its center of mass blasted through and ripped both gates off their hinges.

I started running downhill, and threw the sauce shield down. A spray of butter coated the street almost immediately and I almost had the damned thing sail off into the distance before I could put my foot on it. I went screaming down the rest of the street at ludicrous speed, just a split-second before a car landed where I was earlier.

The crunching and twisting noises as it turned into so much scrap metal was _not_ reassuring.

Car alarms started wailing before they were picked up and thrown, or just knocked away by the giant wave of black matter the demon rode on. A T-shaped intersection came zooming towards me way too fast for my liking. Wobbling and struggling to balance on one foot, I held my bladed shield to my back foot, then stomped it down as hard as I could on the pavement.

The asphalt made a horrible noise as my shield dug into it and carved a foot-wide ditch straight down the middle of it. I was still screaming downhill, but at the very least, I could feel myself slowing down almost as much, maybe just enough for me to stop before I hit a wall, then make a hard turn, and zoom down the street.

So of course, the demon had to throw a bus right in the middle of the intersection and force me to an early stop.

My momentum forced through a window and onto the upside-down bus's ceiling. The butter shield clanged noisily on the side of it, while my bladed shield made a loud noise as it embedded itself into it. I tried to pick myself up, escape through the other side, but black claws crunched down on either end of the bus, then ripped the thing in half.

I looked up and saw the demon turning the bottom of the bus around, so it could use it to pound me into a paste. I swear that bastard smiled at me, even if it didn't have lips. Then it took a spear to the side and that smile disappeared.

Other hunters were coming to my aid—obviously, the commotion earlier couldn't have mysteriously escaped everyone's attention. The demon angrily threw the halve down at me, but fortunately, I had the good sense to escape back out the window I'd come through while it was distracted.

I picked up the sauce shield first and raised it above my head, just in time to deflect a spike that was waiting for me. Butter rained down from above as the point suddenly slipped off my shield and dug itself into the concrete, enough time for me to pull my blade shield out from the gouge it'd dug itself in.

Rearmed, I fled the wreckage of the bus and got a good look of the situation.

Two other hunters had joined the fight, but they didn't seem to be doing much. The demon's sight and awareness didn't seem to be restricted like mortals or us hunters, a group of limbs dueling and driving away the other hunters while a second batch threw more cars into the streets and collapsed street lights and parts of buildings, blocking us into the intersection.

I clicked the shield into Salsa, then started revving up my bladed shield.

I'd love to say this was when we teamed up as one and defeated the demon in a brutal fight that left us scarred and battered but smiling, but it was obvious in less than a minute that we were going to need a lot more than just three hunters. One of them went down from after a feint by a claw and a spike, the other didn't look like she was going to last much longer against three limbs to one her.

Call it cowardly, but I turned and ran, only to find myself blocked in by a wall of concrete and metal. From the speed that demon could move, I knew climbing was only going to make me an easy target, so I just put my back to the wall, readied my shields, and prepared for my last stand.

Then the wall exploded.

More specifically, in curry that dislodged most of the wreckage, then salsa that melted it down and kept me from getting killed by flying chunks and shrapnel.

Through the yellow haze charged two more hunters. I picked myself up and rushed in the opposite direction, through the fog and right in front of Honey Lemon. She had her hand ready to chuck another salsa grenade and a smile on her face, one that quickly disappeared as her eyes turned back to the demon.

Even with three separate hunters wailing at it, it was still coming after us.

There was no time to plan. I clicked it to Butter, threw both shields down, and picked up Honey Lemon as we went screaming down the streets again. The demon reportedly stopped for a significant amount of seconds as it ran straight into the haze, but unfortunately, it'd take a lot more than offending its sense of "smell" to kill it.

Traffic had disappeared. Police barricades, intrepid reporters, and possibly suicidal citizens with their camera phones were the only people left, but even they scattered in a hurry when we came roaring towards them on a wave of butter, a giant, angry demon tearing up the streets right after us.

Honey Lemon screamed a direction then blasted some mayo on the ground to slow me down, I'd do my damnedest to turn where she said to turn. We went down the streets and alleyways of San Fransokyo, till we finally came to an abandoned subway entrance that had been blocked over with boards and random junk.

Honey Lemon threw a curry bomb and blasted the barricade out of our way; I went surfing down the stairs into a disused subway station, before I sailed off the platform, into the rails, my shields going on without me.

I spun Honey Lemon around and braced myself best as I could. There might have been a sound as my back hit the edge of the opposite platform, but my ears were still ringing from all the alarms and screaming, then the excruciating pain that suddenly shot throughout my entire system made it hard to think of anything else.

Honey Lemon tumbled onto the ancient tracks, dirty, a little bruised, but otherwise unharmed. I forced myself back on my feet, picking up my shields and getting them back on my hands. Around us, demons and mortals from the underground black market were popping their heads out to see what the commotion was.

Then our target came surfing down the stairs, and those black marketeers popped their heads straight back in.

Our target formed two spikes and threw them at us as hard as it could, one for me, one for Honey Lemon.

I started spinning my blade shield till it could go as fast as I could make it.

Honey Lemon raised her hand and let out a spray of mayo at the demon's limbs.

Mayo splattered all over the black pillars and slowed them down, enough of a delay for me to jumped in front of both spikes and block them with my shields.

The first spike hit the sauce shield, a spray of butter sent it sliding off and going several feet off-target into the far wall.

The second spike hit my bladed shield, making a horrible noise like a rod getting thrown into a wheel going at 60 MPH. The spike stuck to the surface, resisting going along the shield's rotation, before it broke through and went surging right into me.

If it was any comfort, I saw Honey Lemon disappear deeper into the tunnels before I died.


	16. Death, Reflection, and Resurrection

Three days. Three days on the mortal plain was how long they kept me up there in the Lodge, but given the screwy, fucked up rules my existence operated by, I could have been up there for a century or two.

Like any organization worth its salt, the Lodge changed punishments as soon as one was deemed ineffective or too light. With my third death in a row, two downed Big Game demons be damned, I was not only slapped with yet another hefty fine, but I was also forced into a Reflection Room.

A reflection room is kind of like a training room: in its default state, it is a vast expanse of nothing with a tiny circle in the middle for you to stay in. You could turn it into almost anything, like a quiet forest path surrounded by tall trees; a nice, calm beach with a convenient sunny rock for you to meditate on; or a city late at night with the muted hustle and bustle of its citizens all around you.

I turned it into the rat-infested, rusted, and just generally filthy gym of my misspent childhood, and ignored everything but a familiar sight I hadn't seen in a while:

Stink-Eye Sid.

Sid was a leather punching bag that refused to spontaneously tear apart at the seems, could always be re-stuffed and stitched back together no matter what happened to him, and had a face taped on that always seemed to be giving you shit no matter how badly you mangled him.

He was a landmark, a local legend, and a major reason I kept coming back to the gym, if only so I could punch and kick all my anger and frustrations out on him. They'd made him exactly as he was the night before I died the first time around, the night I passed on beating the shit out of him so I wouldn't be late to the fight that'd eventually end up with me dead in an alley.

I made up for those years now, tearing Sid up worse than he'd ever been in his whole existence, every punch and kick fueled and empowered by my being a Hunter and all the crap I'd accumulated since becoming one.

They didn't give me instructions about what to reflect on. I didn't know if I was going to be here till I had a revelation or a counter down at the Lodge ran out. So for what was probably hours or days, I just beat the ever loving crap out of Sid, till almost all of his seams tore, I'd literally knocked almost all of the stuffing out of him, and rearranged his face so bad his infamous stink-eye was just below his perennial scowl.

Then, I stopped, yelled at the top of my lungs, and sat down on a nearby bench. However badly I'd torn Sid up, he was still hanging on the ceiling, ready to be beaten the hell up or taken down for repairs, and as always, giving me shit with his look.

Where did I go wrong, I wondered? What series of mistakes, wrong-doings, and poor life decisions had I done to lead me to this?

Running away from home in a fit of raging hormones and teenage stupidity was probably a big factor. Dad tried his best, that was for sure, but his best just wasn't enough for a moody, introverted little shit like me who had a problem expressing her feelings non-violently.

Joining a gang was another. I should have listened to the only smart thought Cold, Hungry, and Alone Me had, which was go back home and beg for forgiveness, instead of taking on the nice punk's offer of a place to sleep and food if I'd fight for them against some other gang they had a beef with.

Going to that stupid fucking turf war was probably one of the biggest. I'd known the Cereal Chillers were notoriously insane bastards, I'd heard all the stories about how the stupidity of their name was inversely proportional to how dangerous they were, and I should have followed so many of my fellow gang-members actions and backed the fuck out when our “beloved” leader said we were going to fight them over their home base, an abandoned drive-thru movie theater.

But no, I had to let teenage bravado and misplaced loyalty win over rational thinking, which is how I ended up dead in a corner from a bullet in my stomach.

Then there was agreeing to become a Hunter soon after. Maybe I should have gone the easy way out and become a Demon like so many others, or even just did my time as a Husk, instead of becoming a Hunter on the promise of getting over to Summerland when my service was done—though these days, it was more of a question of _if_ it was ever going to end.

Then I thought of that fateful day that seemed so long ago, the day I reached into my jacket pocket and found my panties missing, and instead of stripping half-naked like and using the perfectly serviceable pair I was wearing, I had to run and decided to ask a total stranger for her panties instead, one I'd come to know as Honey Lemon.

And suddenly, she was all I could think about.

Did we have something back there? Was I just going to be yet another name on her list of messed-up ex-girlfriends, the other party in the stories she was going to tell her latest screwed-up girlfriend? Or were we going to be a happy, if far from well-adjusted couple?

There was only one way to find out, and that was getting serious with her, and obviously, I couldn't do that up here in the Reflection Room, so back I went to Sid, beating the shit out of him again, then beating the shit out of him even harder when he gave me crap about my being such a wuss with his look.

The rest of my stay there was a blur of violence, anger, maybe even a little bit of crying in disgust, self-loathing, and regret. I don't know if a timer ran out, I'd reached a certain quota of venting out my feelings, or I'd miraculously hit some kind of revelation They wanted me to have without realizing it, but eventually I disappeared from the reflection room and ended back on the floor of my room.

I just lay there for a good long while, staring up at the ceiling, looking at the light from the corner of my eyes and hearing noises filter in from my window, changing as late afternoon turned to evening. My physical body wasn't tired in the slightest, but after all that I'd went through in the Lodge, I just felt hollow, like every single ounce of care and concern in my body had just been drained.

There was a knocking on my door, before someone opened it. A familiar scent of flowers and other nice smells wafted in, overpowered only by the delicious aroma of coffee that I knew would taste like complete and utter crap.

“Hey GoGo! Welcome back.”

In an instant, I was off the floor and back on my feet. There was Honey Lemon, back to her usual look, that same smile on her face, and two mugs in her hands, a pink kitten and a yellow puppy.

In most other stories, this'd be when I'd tackle her into a hug, kiss her, or make some declaration of how much I missed her and/or that I loved her. Instead, we sat down on the side of my mattress, Honey Lemon handed me my mug, and I wrapped my arm around her waist as we sipped at our drinks.

It wasn't a dramatic or romantic reunion, but you know what? It suited us just fine.

“A _lot_ of things have happened since you were gone.” Honey Lemon said as she handed me a fresh stick of homemade gum. “Where do you want me to start?”

I popped it back into my mouth and started chewing. “The latest demon that killed me—what happened to it?” I wasn't too happy about getting back to work, but I already knew what'd happen if I tried to shirk it off.

“First and foremost, we have a name for it now—'Yokai,' which is Japanese for 'Demon.' Very original, I know.” Honey Lemon chuckled. “More importantly, it's still at large, no one knows where the it went after it got away, and Fred's pretty sure it's the cause of all the Big Game demon appearances and all the weirdness around the city, if not a huge part of it.”

I nodded. “Casualties?”

“Several civilian injuries but no casualties, _lots_ of dollars in property damage, and two dead Hunters—three if you include me.”

I blinked. “Wait, what?”

Honey Lemon smiled sheepishly. “Uh, yeah, turns out my gamble to hide in the black market didn't go so well… no honour among demons and their loyal customers either, it seems.”

“Wait, then you're a hunter now, too?” I asked.

Honey Lemon grinned. “Nope! Turns out I'm not exactly qualified, and I'm a much worse person than I thought I was...”

With surges of pinkish flames, a demon tail with a heart-shaped tip sprouted from her back; two very long horns grew on her head, rising up before gently curving backwards; and two leathery bat wings spread out from almost invisible slits in the back of her dress.

“Don't worry, GoGo,” Honey Lemon said, her tail playfully rubbing its tip up and down my thigh. “I'm still on your side and still going to help you. Just this time, as a demon helping fight other demons.” She chuckled. “It turns out a lot of demons and Links in the city don't like Yokai anymore than we do, either.”

I stared at her for a good long while in complete, total silence.

“This is crazy.” I said.

“Yep.”

“ _You're_ crazy.”

Honey Lemon laughed. “I thought we already established that.”

“You're going to drive _me_ crazy.”

“Only if you'll let me. We can totally break up, and I can go partner up with another Hunter, if you'd like.” Honey Lemon said casually.

The thought of Honey Lemon being with someone else sent a feeling of intense, excruciating dread all over me, worse than any demon had given me, regular, Big Game, or Yokai.

Honey Lemon kept on smiling and coaxed me to face her with her tail. She gently leaned down and butted her horns against my head, eyes looking straight down into mine. “Just so you know, if I ever have to hurt you or kill you GoGo, it's nothing personal~” She said cheerfully.

I made a little noise to say I understood.

Honey Lemon pulled away and pulled out her phone. She took a selfie of us, her grinning, me looking blankly ahead with my cheeks burning red. “Before anything else, we're meeting up with a new contact of mine, someone who's trying to stop Yokai, too.” She said as she scrolled to a map app. “We're meeting up at a strip-club called the Den of Sin at ten tonight.”

I nodded mutely.

“In the meanwhile, I've brought my laptop and DVDs of all the Lesbian Horror Hunters movies so far. Want to watch them after I get you up to speed on everything else that's happened?”

“Sure.”


	17. A Match Made In The Land Way Down Under

_“Knock knock! Who's there? Flamethrower! Flamethrower who?”_

_Bang! FWOOSH!_

_Maya the one-armed werewolf Horror Hunter laughed maniacally as she treated the demons inside the abandoned supermarket to a huge spray of holy fire. There were lots of gratuitous shots of the damned minimum wage employees and middle managers screaming as they burned, before their heads exploded in messy, bloody sprays._

_“Seriously, Maya?” Elise the 731-year old vampire Horror Hunter said as she stayed a good distance behind with all the other Horror Hunters. They readied their weapons as they looked on at the carnage with mixtures of amusement, disgust, to flat faces—the camera giving special attention to their attractive figures and skimpy outfits too, of course._

_"FOOLS!" A “demonic” voice roared from inside."DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU PUNY WORMS CAN STOP US?!"  
_

_“Rules of nature, dude!” Maya yelled over the sound of a fresh blast of holy napalm. “She who has the flamethrower, wins!”_

Honey Lemon laughed as we cuddled together on the couch, my head on her lap, her tail casually running up and down my one bare thigh. “That part always gets me, you know?” She said.

I grunted in agreement. We watched the heroines make their way into the Walmart/Portal to Hell, going through the demon hordes in a ridiculously brutal and bloody fashion, all with a few choice shots of armour getting ripped off and candid aside glances at the audience as they blasted a demon with a shotgun.

Then an alarm sounded on both our phones.

Honey Lemon reached over me and paused the video, I got up and stretched. “Time to go to work!” Honey Lemon said as she shut her laptop and flew off the couch. She hovered into Wasabi on her way out, him being understandably freaked out to see Honey because he was just returning from a long shift at work, had no idea I was back, and never met Honey Lemon before.

Well, that and the facts that she had wings, horns, and a tail, and was flying to boot.

“Hi, you must be Wasabi, GoGo's roommate!” Honey Lemon smiled. “I'm Honey Lemon, her girlfriend. Love to stay and chat, but we were just about to leave!” She said as she easily slipped past him and went out the door.

Wasabi stared at her for a few moments, before he quickly turned to me, the look on his face a mixture of his usual annoyance and intense confusion. “You mind explaining to me why your flying girlfriend's got horns, wings, and a tail?” He asked.

“Later,” I said as I walked out the door and past him. “And provided you still remember that by the time we get back.”

I stepped out of my apartment and into the halls, shutting the door after me. I took three steps out, slipped in a puddle of butter, and hit the floor on my back.

Honey Lemon hovered over from the side then landed over me, one platform heel on either side of my face. She calmly slipped her panties down on my face, before stepping out of them and hovering down the hall. “Forgot to give you those earlier, sorry!” She said with mock apology as she slipped her bronze shield charm back onto her wrist.

The butter was suddenly a lot less slippery, enough to let me stand up no problem. I grabbed her panties off my face, then looked at it—mint green and pure white. I groaned and stuffed them into my other jacket pocket, then followed after Honey.

I made a note to save up spare pairs of Honey's undies soon--I was going to need them.


End file.
